Starter Kit. Idea 351 of 500. Cluster 17
Medical tourism packages for cataract, hip and knee, with the surgeon's record published
The mechanism, from the book
Sri Lankans abroad have parents at home whom they cannot look after from Melbourne. They will pay, and the money stays.
The first step
Choose one procedure, cataract, hip or knee, and ask three surgeons in private hospitals whether they will publish their number of operations and their complication record for a visitor's brochure. The one who says yes is your partner. Put the package on one page, surgeon's record, hotel, transfers and price, and send it to 10 Sri Lankan families with friends abroad who are waiting for that operation.
- Who pays first
- A patient abroad facing a long wait or a high price for a knee operation, introduced by a Sri Lankan friend who vouches for the surgeon.
- What leaves today
- Patients who could pay island prices go elsewhere because no surgeon's record is published; the record is the proof that brings the fee here.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether packages sold to foreign patients must be registered as tourism products.
- Sri Lanka Medical Council. Ask what a surgeon may publish about their own results.
Check before you spend
Each surgeon's written consent to publish their record, the hospital's agreement, and that the package is sold by a business allowed to sell travel.
Find out these three numbers
- What does the procedure cost abroad for the people waiting?
- What will the full package cost here, hotel included?
- How many people in one association are waiting for this operation?
A comparison from the book
The fridge by the road. Chapter Six
"a place where the honest move is also the winning move, so ordinary people play it"
A surgeon who publishes the record wins the patients, so honesty becomes the selling point.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.