Medtronic, Baptist Health South Florida see opportunity in Latin America’s healthcare
The growing middle classes across Latin America and expanding Internet access will change the way U.S. healthcare institutions manage foreign patients’ care, as well as how those organizations reach patients in their home countries.
A panel of healthcare experts representing hospitals, healthcare data companies and device makers discussed how rapidly those changes are taking place and what’s to come at WorldCity’s Global Connections on Sept. 30.
Technology continues to be one of the biggest game changers throughout the region, particularly as wireless access becomes more prevalent.
“Medicine has always been a mystery. You go to a restaurant and you want to know what a pound of shrimp costs and there’s a menu. There’s no menu if you want a hip replacement,” said Michael Carricarte Sr., chairman of medical software company IOS Health Systems. “Today I can go on the computer and there are 10 articles about ingrown toenails or stents.
“The world is being run today by younger people who are very electronically savvy, before they go anywhere [for a surgery] they know where to go,” he added.
On top of that companies and doctors are using technology to reach out and follow up on patients from around the world.
“We’re basing it all on tele-health, the ability to exchange information with physicians in those emerging markets,” said Dr. Mario Mendez, corporate vice president for international for Baptist Health South Florida. It offers “the ability to do virtual grand rounds with 20 different doctors from 15 countries at the same time. That’s revolutionized the way we reach out to those marketplaces.”
At the same time insurance for the masses creates a variety of challenges and opportunities for healthcare companies as well as hospitals and doctors.
“Today insurance companies are covering outside the U.S,” Carricarte said. “If you told a company five years ago to cover [you] outside the U.S. you were a freak.”
The proliferation of health insurance in Latin America, however, comes in many shapes and forms, including Mexico’s public health insurance, which has “a catalog of thing they will provide and things they won’t,” said Urs Brunner, senior director of strategic market access for Medtronic Latin America.
“In Brazil about two million per year transition from the poverty line to the middle class, and with that they are starting to demand healthcare,” he added.
Carricarte of IOS Health Systems said he sees three classes of healthcare rising: elite for the cash-paying wealthy; planned medicine that says members can only use certain doctors and hospital; and mass medicine.
“Your toe hurts? OK you have an appointment for September of 2012,” he said as an example of mass medicine. “If you go to some of the mass hospitals in Latin America you see people lined up and you’re going to keep seeing them lined up.”
Yet there seems to be opportunity amongst all that confusion.
“Telemedicine was discussed earlier to get advice” from doctors, said Medtronic’s Brunner. “We do telemedicine to monitor patients remotely, and that works in Latin America.
It “may seem somewhat dysfunctional… in the struggle of trying to cover all these patients, but there is business to be made,” he added.
One way is to partner with brick-and-mortar facilities across the region.
Baptist’s “international division is partnering with a lot of healthcare systems in Latin America as consultants and giving them the know-how of how to make hospital systems more efficient,” Dr. Mendez said.
Despite all the improvements in healthcare and opportunities that remain, there’s still a disparity in how much is spent on healthcare and how widely it’s offered.
“Latin America has been underfunded and they have new patients coming in all the time,” Brunner added. “It all links back to the general economy of the countries. Remember this whole healthcare system is funded through taxation in one way or another. Latin America on average spends about four percent of its GDP on healthcare… that’s translated to $300 to $400 spent per patient, a huge difference.”
Global Connections is one of seven event series organized by WorldCity to bring together executives on international business topics. The Global series is sponsored by Florida International University’s business school, Comcast Business Class and by real estate company Waterford at Blue Lagoon.
The next Global Connections forum is scheduled for Oct. 28 and will focus on Medicine, Healthcare and Wellness in Latin America.