(PRLog.Org) – Nov 10, 2007 – Panama– Pana-Health, Corp., Panama’s premier Medical Tourism Company, have recently signed affiliation contracts with the two largest, and most experienced Hospitals in Panama, Clinica Hospital San Fernando and Centro Medico Paitilla. These two Hospitals have over 30 years of experience in the medical arena, are equipped with state of the art technology, and have affiliations to highly distinguished international Institutions such as Cleveland Clinic, Tulane University Medical Center of New Orleans, Baptist Hospital South Florida and Miami Children’s Hospital, among others. These alliances strengthen Panama’s medical choices to patients looking for first class medical services that are, both, closer to home and affordable. Pana-Health was founded in 2003 by a small group of doctors and has rapidly grown to become a Company with over 150 of the best doctors in Panama. Membership is by invitation only, and after peer recommendation and review. Pana-Health brings personalized attention to all medical travelers, helping them to find the best doctors in Panama for their specific needs, as well as handle consultations and appointment scheduling. Its alliance with Pesantez Tours, the largest tour operator in Panama, gives Pana-Health the capacity to take care of transportation, lodging and any type of tourism that the patient wishes to do while visiting the country.
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The First Penal Court will hold hearings on Monday morning on a group of eleven people who are involved in a network of people who are conducting insurance fraud based on fake car accidents. In the investigation conducted by the 13th District Attorney’s office, they were able to establish that members of the group would simulate traffic accidents, and then later take the cars to repair shops owned by family members in order to charge the insurance companies. They DA also requested that the traffic police officers who filled out the accident forms be investigated as well, but the court rejected that request, deciding that the police officers were not involved in the network. The hearings were scheduled after the Public Ministry was able to determine that the people involved in the fraud network had a certain degree of connection to the owners of the car repair shops.
A juicio red que simulaba accidentes
Juan Manuel Díaz C.
PANAMA AMERICA
EL JUZGADO Primero Penal realizará el lunes la audiencia de fondo a un grupo de 11 presuntos integrantes de una red que hacía fraudes contra empresas aseguradoras, mediante la simulación de accidentes de tránsito.
En la investigación, desarrollada por la Fiscalía Decimotercera, se estableció que el grupo simulaba colisiones, para luego llevar los autos a talleres de familiares y cobrar la reparación a las aseguradoras.
Se solicitó investigar a los agentes policiales que realizaban los partes de las colisiones, pero esta petición fue desechada por el tribunal, por considerar que no estaban implicados.
La audiencia se realizará luego que el Ministerio Público determinara que los integrantes de la red tenían cierto grado de parentesco con los dueños de talleres.
SOURCE: Don Winner @ Panama-guide.com
By Doreen Hemlock for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel - PANAMA CITY, Panama Americans are traveling abroad for medical care like never before and now looking to Panama as a destination to cure their insurance woes, high prices and delays for treatment back home. This Central American nation touts U.S.-trained doctors, high-tech hospitals and costs far below U.S. rates to attract Americans for services from dental implants to hip replacements. It also promotes its location near U.S. shores. “In the beginning of medical tourism, Americans went to distant places like Thailand and India. It seems logical the next step would be Latin America — closer to the United States and more similar in culture,” said Panamanian dentist Richard Ford, who studied at Louisiana State University and leads a medical tourism group, Pana-Health. (more)
So far, Panama attracts only hundreds of U.S. patients a year, doctors estimate, but the potential for growth is huge.
With roughly 47 million Americans lacking health insurance, millions more under insured and U.S. health care costs skyrocketing, many can no longer afford medical care in the United States. 
© Sean Justice/Corbis
About half a million Americans traveled overseas for more affordable health care in 2006. And that number is rising at double-digit rates, spurred by easier travel, Internet communications and a growing support network from health travel agencies to blogs, according to the recently formed Medical Tourism Association in West Palm Beach.
U.S. employers are starting to catch on. Some now provide health insurance that covers workers who get medical care abroad. United Group Programs of Boca Raton, for instance, offers the coverage to help employers trim rising health costs for their workers, according to tourism association reports.
Hospitals worldwide are vying for the surging business, too. Many seek certifications to boost their allure for Americans and other foreign patients. The Joint Commission International, an arm of the nonprofit group that accredits U.S. hospitals, accredited more than 120 hospitals from Brazil to Turkey in the past few years. And it just opened offices in the Middle East and Asia to handle rising requests.
At least one hospital in Panama is seeking the commission’s accreditation: the year-old Punta Pacifica Hospital affiliated with the prestigious Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore. The 65-bed Punta Pacifica expects international patients to account for as much as 80 percent of its business within several years, up from 30 percent today, chief medical director Rolando Bissot said.
Visitors at the new hospital get high-tech attention. In the lobby, patients can use a computer touch-screen to check in, either in English or Spanish. New medical equipment, mainly from General Electric, includes a “4-D”sonogram, so pregnant women can take home a DVD that shows their unborn child moving, rather than a photograph.
Americans aren’t the only foreigners checking in.
With U.S. entry visas harder to get since Sept. 11, 2001, some patients from Latin America and the Caribbean who might have sought care in South Florida are turning to Panama.
“The problems with visas in the United States have turned out to be a benefit for us,” said Pana-Health’s Ford.
Panama revved up its marketing for American patients in 2003 when about a dozen U.S.-trained doctors joined with a local travel agency to promote their services internationally. The doctors formed a review committee to vet credentials of applicants and since then have expanded to about 100 professionals. Inquiries to their Web site are rising by about 30 percent a year, Ford said.
Most Americans contacting the group are older than 40, not Hispanic and lack insurance for their medical procedures. Those who come to Panama generally travel with a friend or relative and stay about a week. Most pay cash for treatments that range from face lifts to in-vitro fertilization. Doctors’ fees tend to run about half the cost and hospital stays 80 percent less than U.S. rates, Ford said.
“Other countries may be cheaper, but we offer state-of-the-art equipment and care,” said Ford, his BlackBerry device near his computer.
Many Americans living in Panama laud the quality of Panama’s top doctors, even bringing their U.S. relatives down for treatment.
Lauretta Bonfiglio, a U.S. restaurateur who relocated to the mountain town of Boquete, recently helped her mother from Montana get a root canal. U.S. dentists had turned down the treatment, citing her mother’s age as complicating insurance coverage. Bonfiglio made arrangements with a dentist in Panama and paid $250, far less than a root canal would cost in the states.
In Panama City, retiree Catherine McCabe said she found an able replacement for the dental specialist she had used in Beverly Hills, Calif. She’s thrilled with the diabetes care her husband receives. Four specialists attended to him for more than two hours recently. And she’s delighted to routinely receive the cell-phone and home numbers of her Panamanian doctors, who will make house calls if needed.
“You’re not a number. They look you in the eye and care about you as an individual,” she said. “I don’t find that in U.S. health care.”
Doreen Hemlock can be reached at dhemlock@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5009.
Find video interviews with retiree Catherine McCabe and Dr. Richard Ford along with scenes from inside Punta Pacifica Hospital.
By A. Oppenheimer for the Daily Press - I have long been convinced that medical tourism will be one of Latin America’s biggest industries in the 21st century. On a visit to Panama City recently, I got a glimpse of the coming boom. It’s not just that 100 million Americans will reach retirement age over the next 30 years, and growing numbers of them won’t be able to afford ever-rising U.S. health-care costs. Americans already are traveling to Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina and Chile, among other countries, for heart operations, cosmetic surgery or dental work at half price, and with more personalized attention. Before I tell you what I saw here, let me share with you some figures from a new book by Milica and Karla Bookman. It quotes United Nations figures as saying that the $4.4 trillion-a-year travel and tourism industry has in recent years become the world’s largest industry, bigger than the defense, manufacturing, oil and agriculture sectors. And in many countries, medical tourism is becoming an increasingly growing slice of the travel and tourism sector. (more)
© Wolfgang Flamisch/zefa/Corbis
“Several decades ago, when exotic-locale tourism first took off, the attraction was the three S’s: sun, sand and sex,” the authors write. “The three S’s of developing countries have now been replaced by four S’s: sun, sea, sand and surgery.”
Thailand receives 400,000 medical tourists a year and Costa Rica about 150,000, it says. And one of the reasons Spain’s economy is growing twice as fast as that of most of its neighbors is that hundreds of thousands of German, Swedish and British retirees are living several months a year in Spain, enjoying the warm weather, good life and cheaper health care.
Recently, I visited Panama City’s brand-new Punta Pacifica Hospital, affiliated with the United States’ Johns Hopkins hospitals. Foreigners — mostly Americans without medical insurance or seeking services not covered by their insurance and Canadians who don’t want to wait eight months for an operation in their country’s socialized health system — already make up about 25 percent of the new hospital’s patients.
Rolando Bissot, the hospital’s medical director, told me that a simple coronary bypass surgery that costs $60,000 in the United States costs $30,000 at his hospital in Panama. And a breast implant that goes for $12,000 in the United States is performed for $6,000 here, he said. In Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, these procedures are even less expensive.
But will Americans trust Panamanian doctors? I asked. They already do, he said.
Bissot noted that many U.S. doctors are foreign-born. Indeed, the New England Journal of Medicine says that 25 percent of U.S. doctors studied abroad, and 60 percent of these doctors studied in developing countries.
The 65-bed Punta Pacifica Hospital is not only routinely supervised by Johns Hopkins inspectors, but three of its doctors are U.S.-certified surgeons who perform the same procedures in Miami and New York hospitals, Bissot said.
One of them, orthopedic surgeon Jose Jaen of Miami, told me in a telephone interview that he often tells his U.S. patients who can’t afford an operation in the United States to have it done in Panama.
“It’s the same surgeon, the same operation and the same orthopedic treatment that the patient would get in my Miami clinic, but at half the price,” Jaen told me. “And that includes airfare and hotel.”
My opinion: The big challenge for Latin America will be to get its hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission International, the international branch of the U.S. agency that accredits U.S. hospitals.
So far, while China, India and several other developing countries have JCI-accredited hospitals, in the Americas outside the United States and Canada only hospitals in Brazil and Bermuda have reached that level, according to the JCI Web page. (Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama, among others, are applying for accreditation.)
But we’re witnessing the beginning of a booming industry that will expand to retirement communities, health-focused hotels and spas for all kinds of treatments. Much like Spain, Latin American countries may dramatically improve their standards of living by becoming hosts to rich countries’ retirees.
And if the competition helps put downward pressure on U.S. health-care costs, there will be even more reasons to celebrate.
SOURCE: Don Winner @ Panama-guide.com
