Medical Tourism: Passport to Cheaper Health Care?

When Things Go Wrong

For all the patients who offer rave reviews, bad outcomes can and do happen. Jude Jarvis, a 35-year-old mother of three from Scituate, RI, was five-foot-four, 185 pounds, and unhappy about her body. In 2006, she told her sister Elizabeth Wright that she wanted a tummy tuck and a breast reduction, but that she didn't have the $20,000 it would cost. When Wright, who had just heard about a 60 Minutes segment on medical tourism, told her about the overseas option, Jarvis set off to learn more.

One call she made was to Rudy Rupak, founder of Planet Hospital. Rupak says Jarvis told him she wanted not only the stomach and breast work, but also liposuction, a face-lift, and an arm-thinning brachioplasty. Rupak gave her four options: Costa Rica, Panama, Thailand, and India, which was the least expensive. Jarvis chose India.

But she didn't get much further with Planet Hospital. Learning that Jarvis's body mass index was almost 32, Rupak explained that the long flight to India was a bad idea. Air travel increases the risk of deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in its various forms (usually a blood clot in the lung), so if a patient's BMI is 29 or higher, Planet Hospital recommends a country that can be reached in less than eight hours. "We truly felt that her weight made it unsafe for her to have so many surgeries and then travel for so long," says Rupak. He also suggested she have the operations in two stages, and in a nearby country like Costa Rica or Panama, even though hospitals there would charge a bit more. "She was very angry and told a Planet Hospital associate that we were only out for the money. That was the last we heard from her," Rupak says.

Jarvis ended up booking her surgery directly with Wockhardt Hospitals, Mumbai. On May 6, 2006, she flew alone to India. Surgery was performed on May 9 by Narendra Pandya, M.D., the same doctor Planet Hospital would have suggested. Four days later, Jarvis died in the hospital from a pulmonary embolism.

More than a year later, Wright says she still doesn't know what went wrong. Did the long flight contribute to the embolism? Was there a problem with her surgery? Could Zelnorm, a prescription drug for irritable bowel syndrome that Jarvis was taking, have helped create the blockage? The FDA pulled the medication from the market in March 2007 because it was found to cause strokes, which are associated with pulmonary embolisms.

Wright doesn't have any answers; all she knows is that if her sister hadn't traveled abroad for surgery, she'd probably still be alive. "I wish I'd never told her about that damned TV show," she says.

Previous Page  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Next Page