Saturday, June 22, 2013

Top 10 hospitals in Canada (2013)

From the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/noralou-roos/health-care-in-canada_b_3473935.html

Top 10 hospitals in Canada (2013)

  1. Sturgeon Community Hospital, Alberta
  2. High River General Hospital, Alberta
  3. Banff Mineral Springs Hospital, Alberta (Covenant Health)
  4. Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital, Ontario
  5. Lamont Health Care Centre, Alberta
  6. Victoria General Hospital, Manitoba
  7. St. Joseph's Healthcare London, Ontario
  8. Chaleur Regional Hospital, New Brunswick
  9. Saskatoon City Hospital, Saskatchewan
  10. Grace Hospital, Manitoba







Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Good book about Healthcare Management Consulting for Doctors entering the field of Management Consulting

This is a good book for those Healthcare professionals (especially doctors) interested in Management Consulting:



Physicians' Pathways To Non-Traditional Careers And Leadership Opportunities.


Sunday, July 15, 2012

Will post new blogs soon.

Haven't blogged for a while. Have been busy with running a business. www.vikaa.ca Hope to post some new blogs soon.

Meanwhile, I hope you find some of the old posts interesting.

Cheers!

Dr. Gerry Som. MD (MBA)
Owner & CEO, Vikaa Inc.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

America has a health care paradox

From the link: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2012/02/america-health-care-paradox.html

There is a real PARADOX in American healthcare.

On the one hand we have exceptionally well educated and well trained providers who are committed to our care. We are the envy of the world for our biomedical research prowess, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health and conducted across the county in universities and medical schools. The pharmaceutical industry continuously brings forth life saving and disease altering medications. The medical device industry is incredibly innovative and entrepreneurial. The makers of diagnostic equipment such as CAT scans and hand held ultrasounds are equally productive.

But, on the other hand, there is a dysfunctional health care delivery system.

Our current delivery system focuses on acute medical problems where it is reasonably effective. But it works poorly for most chronic medical illnesses and it costs far too much. When the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, was asked why he robbed banks he replied “that’s where the money is.” In healthcare the money is in chronic illnesses – diabetes with complications, cardiac diseases such as heart failure, cancer and neurologic diseases. These consume about 75-85% of all dollars spent on medical care. So we need to focus there.

These chronic illnesses are increasing in frequency at a very rapid rate. They are largely (although certainly not totally) preventable. Overeating a non-nutritious diet, lack of exercise, chronic stress, and 20% still smoking are the major predisposing causes of these chronic illnesses. Obesity is now a true epidemic with one-third of us overweight and one-third of us frankly obese. The result is high blood pressure, high cholesterol, elevated blood glucose and toxins that lead to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, chronic lung and kidney disease and cancer.

And once any of these chronic diseases develops, it usually persists for life (of course some cancers are curable but not so diabetes or heart failure). These are complex diseases to treat and expensive to treat – an expense that continues for the rest of the person’s life.

What is needed is aggressive preventive approaches and, for those with a chronic illness, a multi-disciplinary approach, one that has a committed physician coordinator. Providers (and I refer here mostly to primary care physicians), unfortunately, do not give really adequate preventive care in most cases. And they generally do not spend the time needed to coordinate the care of those with chronic illness – which is absolutely essential to assure good quality at a reasonable cost.

When a patient is sent for extra tests, imaging or specialists visits the costs go up exponentially and the quality does not rise with the costs. Indeed it often falls. But primary care physicians are in a non-sustainable business model with today’s reimbursement systems so they find they just do no have enough time for care coordination or more than the basics of preventive care.

So the paradox is that we have the providers, the science, the drugs, the diagnostics and devices that we need for patient care. But we have a new type of disease – complex, chronic illness, mostly preventable, for which we have not established good methods of prevention nor do we care for them adequately once the disease develops. And all of this is exacerbated by an insurance system that puts the incentives in the wrong places. The result is a sicker population, episodic care and expenses that are far greater than necessary.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

The journey of TR Reid to various countries

From the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/

Reid's first stop is the UNITED KINGDOM, where the government-run National Health Service (NHS) is funded through taxes. "Every single person who's born in the U.K. will use the NHS," says Whittington Hospital CEO David Sloman, "and none of them will be presented a bill at any point during that time."

Often dismissed in America as "socialized medicine," the NHS is now trying some free-market tactics like "pay-for-performance," where doctors are paid more if they get good results controlling chronic diseases like diabetes. And now patients can choose where they go for medical procedures, forcing hospitals to compete head to head.

While such initiatives have helped reduce waiting times for elective surgeries, Times of London health editor Nigel Hawkes thinks the NHS hasn't made enough progress. "We're now in a world in which people are much more demanding, and I think that the NHS is not very effective at delivering in that modern, market-orientated world."

Reid reports next from JAPAN, which boasts the second largest economy and the best health statistics in the world. The Japanese go to the doctor three times as often as Americans, have more than twice as many MRI scans, use more drugs, and spend more days in the hospital. Yet Japan spends about half as much on health care per capita as the United States.

One secret to Japan's success? By law, everyone must buy health insurance -- either through an employer or a community plan -- and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit.

Reid's journey then takes him to GERMANY, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the

German parliament, describes it as "a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy." As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.

In the 1990s, TAIWAN researched many health care systems before settling on one where the government collects the money and pays providers. But the delivery of health care is left to the market. Every person in Taiwan has a "smart card" containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically. But the Taiwanese are spending too little to sustain their health care system, according to Princeton's Tsung-mei Cheng, who advised the Taiwanese government. "As we speak, the government is borrowing from banks to pay what there isn't enough to pay the providers," she told FRONTLINE.

Reid's last stop is SWITZERLAND, a country which, like Taiwan, set out to reform a system that did not cover all its citizens. In 1994, a national referendum approved a law called LAMal ("the sickness"), which set up a universal health care system that, among other things, restricted insurance companies from making a profit on basic medical care. The Swiss example shows health care reform is possible, even in a highly capitalist country with powerful insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Today, Swiss politicians from the right and left enthusiastically support universal health care. "Everybody has a right to health care," says Pascal Couchepin, the current president of Switzerland. "It is a profound need for people to be sure that if they are struck by destiny ... they can have a good health system."

OECD Web book contents

Table of contents

Access all indicators below via the web book.

Chapter 1. Health Status
  • Life expectancy at birth
  • Premature mortality
  • Mortality from heart disease and stroke
  • Mortality from cancer
  • Mortality from transport accidents
  • Suicide
  • Infant mortality
  • Infant health: Low birth weight
  • Perceived health status
  • Diabetes prevalence and incidence
  • Cancer incidence
  • AIDS incidence and HIV prevalence
Chapter 2. Non-medical Determinants of Health
  • Tobacco consumption among adults
  • Alcohol consumption among adults
  • Overweight and obesity among adults
  • Overweight and obesity among children
Chapter 3. Health Workforce
  • Employment in the health and social sectors
  • Medical doctors
  • Medical graduates
  • Remuneration of doctors (general practitioners and specialists)
  • Gynaecologists and obstetricians, and midwives
  • Psychiatrists
  • Nurses
  • Nursing graduates
  • Remuneration of nurses
Chapter 4. Health Care Activities
  • Consultations with doctors
  • Medical technologies
  • Hospital beds
  • Hospital discharges
  • Average length of stay in hospitals
  • Cardiac procedures (coronary angioplasty)
  • Hip and knee replacement
  • Treatment of renal failure (dialysis and kidney transplants)
  • Caesarean sections
  • Cataract surgeries
  • Pharmaceutical consumption
Chapter 5. Quality of Care
  • Care for chronic conditions
    - Avoidable admissions: Respiratory diseases
    - Avoidable admissions: Uncontrolled diabetes
  • Care for acute exacerbation of chronic conditions
    - In-hospital mortality following acute myocardial infarction
    - In-hospital mortality following stroke
  • Patient safety
    - Obstetric trauma
    - Procedural or postoperative complications
  • Care for mental disorders
    - Unplanned hospital re-admissions for mental disorders
  • Cancer care
    - Screening, survival and mortality for cervical cancer
    - Screening, survival and mortality for breast cancer
    - Survival and mortality for colorectal cancer
  • Care for communicable diseases
    - Childhood vaccination programmes
    - Influenza vaccination for older people
Chapter 6. Access to Care
  • Unmet health care needs
  • Coverage for health care
  • Burden of out-of-pocket health expenditure
  • Geographic distribution of doctors
  • Inequalities in doctor consultations
  • Inequalities in dentist consultations
  • Inequalities in cancer screening
  • Waiting times
Chapter 7. Health Expenditure and Financing
  • Health expenditure per capita
  • Health expenditure in relation to GDP
  • Health expenditure by function
  • Pharmaceutical expenditure
  • Financing of health care
  • Trade in health services (medical tourism)
Chapter 8. Long-term Care
  • Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at age 65
  • Self-reported health and disability at age 65
  • Prevalence and economic burden of dementia
  • Recipients of long-term care
  • Informal carers
  • Long-term care workers
  • Long-term care beds in institutions and hospitals
  • Long-term care expenditure)

HEALTH AT A GLANCE 2011: OECD INDICATORS

OECD Indicators are a great source of information for doing research and for general knowledge. You can find some info from the link:  http://www.oecd.org/document/11/0,3746,en_2649_37407_16502667_1_1_1_37407,00.html

Graphs: US Health Stats compared to other countries

From the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/etc/graphs.html





VERY Useful readings about Healthcare Management

From the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/etc/links.html

+Health Care and the 2008 Election
+General Analysis of the Health Care Issue
+Health Care Foundations, Think Tanks and Interest Groups
+The International Perspective

Details:

Health Care and the 2008 Election
  • Hillary Clinton's "American Health Choices Plan"
    Sen. Clinton supports an individual mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance, either through their existing provider, from "the quality private insurance options that members of Congress receive," or from a public plan option similar to Medicare. Her plan doesn't include any mechanism for enforcing that mandate, although when pressed, Clinton has said she is open to a variety of methods, including garnishing employees' wages if they do not obtain health care. Read her entire plan (PDF file).

  • "Hillary Clinton Unveils a Promising Health Plan"
    A Sept. 2007 analysis by The Economist of Sen. Clinton's health care reform proposal.

  • "Hillary and Health Care"
    From the NPR program On Point, a one-hour radio discussion of Sen. Clinton's plan, featuring journalists and health policy advisers to the Obama and Clinton campaigns (Sept. 2007).

  • Barack Obama's "Plan for a Healthy America"
    Sen. Obama wants to provide "quality, affordable and portable coverage for all," but his plan falls short of Clinton's universal coverage -- it wouldn't require everyone to have insurance, just all children. And as with Clinton's plan, his offers no enforcement mechanism. Read his entire plan (PDF file).

  • "Obama v. Clinton on 'Universality'"
    Slate's Timothy Noah analyzes the differences between the two candidates and outlines his own thoughts on getting to universal coverage (Nov. 30, 2007).

  • "Clinton, Obama, Insurance"
    Paul Krugman compares the health care plans of the two candidates in this Feb. 4, 2008, New York Times op-ed piece: "The big difference is mandates: the Clinton plan requires that everyone have insurance; the Obama plan doesn't."

  • John McCain's "Straight Talk on Health System Reform"
    Sen. McCain focuses on marketplace competition, which he believes will contain the rapidly rising cost of health care as well as make health care more affordable. His plan would replace employer-provided health insurance with a tax credit for individuals and families to buy their health insurance from any provider. But his plan doesn't require anyone to get insurance, nor does it prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing medical problems. To lower health care costs, McCain also supports improved information technology, more transparency about the quality and cost of care, and tort reform to "eliminate frivolous lawsuits" against doctors.

  • "Why McCain Has the Best Health Care Plan"
    Fortune editor-at-large Shawn Tully compares McCain's proposal to create "a kind of national insurance market" to the Democrats' "Medicare-like federal superprogram." His conclusion: "Both have huge flaws, but on balance McCain's is better," because "it puts the consumer in charge" (March 11, 2008).

  • "John McCain's Health Proposals Are Bad News for Big Pharma"
    The Economist examines measures that McCain endorsed in the Senate that "place him closer to the Democratic contenders on health policy than to any of his Republican rivals for the nomination" (March 2008).

  • "Voodoo Health Economics"
    Paul Krugman's April 2008 New York Times op-ed piece lambasting McCain's free-market approach to delivering health care.

  • "Fixing It: Health Care Policy"
    From a 10-part Slate series offering advice to the next president, Ezra Klein lays out a guide to the politics of health care. Among his suggestions: "Do it first, don't write a bill, and let someone else take the credit." Klein also blogs about health care and politics for the left-leaning American Prospect.

  • "Health Policy Reform in the 2008 Election Season"
    The Commonwealth Fund -- an organization that supports independent research on health care issues and a funder of this FRONTLINE report -- offers a comparison of the candidates' proposals and opinion polls asking the public and health care experts what they think of the candidates' plans.

  • Health08.org
    This Web site run by the Kaiser Family Foundation -- which awarded correspondent T.R. Reid a Kaiser Media Fellowship in support of his work on this report -- tracks the health care issue in the 2008 campaign. Features side-by-side summaries of the candidates' positions and video forums with the candidates. Kaiser also cosponsored, with Harvard and NPR, a poll of primary voters which found broad support for requiring health insurance, but opposition to fining or otherwise punishing those who don't get coverage.


  • General Analysis of the Health Care Issue
  • "Health Care and the Presidential Race: Arguing Over the Care"
    The Economist offers a pithy December 2007 overview of the thorny issues, informed by what some polls are indicating.

  • "Scalpel Please"
    The Economist reports from California on that state's recent failed legislation to provide universal health care coverage.

  • "The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It"
    A lucid and thought-provoking essay by Robin Wells and Paul Krugman in the March 2006 New York Review of Books.

  • "Real Issues: Health Care Costs"
    A one-hour discussion from NPR's On Point on the escalating costs of health care and the ramifications (Feb. 2008).

  • "Rising Health Costs Cut into Wages"
    A Washington Post article on another reason runaway health costs are becoming an economic and political issue: they're contributing to the problem of stagnating wages.

  • "Creative Destruction"
    The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn uses former TNR editor Michael Kinsley treatment for Parkinson's disease as a starting point for dissecting "the best case against universal health care": that a system responsible for providing care for all might stifle innovative but expensive care. Cohn has also written a book about the problems with American health care; listen to an interview with him discussing that topic from the NPR program Fresh Air.

  • "Flashback: And Health Care For All"
    For the release of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, The Atlantic combed its archives for articles critical of health care in America. The pieces they unearthed range from a 1910 critique of medical education up to an analysis of European health care circa 1960.

  • "Dust-Up: Healthcare Reform"
    In February 2007, the Los Angeles Times ran this five-part debate over California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's universal health care plan between a member of the governor's staff and an opponent of the plan. The topics discussed include the role of insurance in health care reform and the problem of insuring illegal immigrants. In January 2008, a compromise bill crafted by Schwarzenegger and the speaker of the California Assembly was rejected by a state Senate committee.

  • "In Massachusetts, Universal Coverage Strains Care"
    Unlike California, Massachusetts managed to pass universal health insurance. But more applicants than anticipated have signed up for coverage, overburdening the commonwealth's primary care physicians, reports Kevin Sack in the April 5, 2008, New York Times. And the AP reports that the Massachusetts program is costing more than expected, forcing lawmakers to consider a $1-per-pack hike to the state's cigarette tax.


  • Health Care Foundations, Think Tanks and Interest Groups
  • Cato Institute: Universal Health Care
    The libertarian Cato Institute favors free-market health care reforms and is skeptical that other nations' health care programs are better than the United States'. Michael Tanner, Cato's director of health and welfare studies, argues that other countries' health care programs "demonstrate the failure of centralized command and control and the benefits of increasing consumer incentives and choice." And economist Glen Whitman takes issue with the World Health Organization's low ranking of the U.S. health care system.

  • America's Health Insurance Plans' "Plan to Cover the Uninsured"
    Any attempt to fix U.S. health care will mean changes for the nation's health insurance companies, so it is not surprising that the industry's lobbying group has put forth its own reform proposal. The gist of their plan: States should create "Guarantee Access Plans" to cover the uninsured with the highest medical costs, and in return, private health insurers will guarantee coverage to all other applicants. Read the full proposal (PDF file) online, along with their take on why health care costs are rising.

  • The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
    The Kaiser Foundation -- which awarded correspondent T.R. Reid a Kaiser Media Fellowship in support of his work on this report -- provides free information on health care through a network of Web sites and partnerships with media organizations. It offers primers on various facets of the U.S. health care system, including Medicare, the rising cost of health care and the uninsured. Kaiser also runs statehealthfacts.org, which compiles health data for all 50 states, and publishes the free Daily Health Policy Report.

  • Commonwealth Fund
    The Commonwealth Fund -- a funder of this FRONTLINE report -- is "a private foundation working toward a high performance health system." To that end, the group established a commission in 2005 to study U.S. health care reform. Read the commission's initial report and its National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, on which the United States scored a 66 out of a possible 100. The fund's site also features an interactive Web feature exploring various options for fixing the U.S. health care system, and a state-by-state health care scorecard.

  • The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care 2008
    A project of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, the atlas documents "glaring variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States." The 2008 atlas and its executive summary are available for download (PDF files), but the highlight of the site is the set of interactive data tools that allows users to produce custom reports comparing states, or even individual hospitals.

  • Brookings Institution Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform
    The Engelberg Center "serves as the 'hub' of all Brookings activity related to health policy." Its home page features a Candidate Issue Index, part of a joint project with ABC News comparing the health care plans of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, and commentary from the think tank's scholars.


  • The International Perspective
  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
    The Paris-based OECD publishes international statistics on a variety of economic issues, including health policy. In Health at a Glance 2007, it collects data on a wide range of health care indicators from its 30 member nations. From that data the OECD also publishes reports on individual countries, including this précis on the United States (PDF file).

  • World Health Organization (WHO)
    Part of the United Nations, the WHO is the group whose World Health Report ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world in 2000. The WHO has not revisited those rankings since then, but it maintains the WHOSIS online database of international health statistics and publishes an annual World Health Statistics Report.

  • NHS Choices
    The rebranded homepage of the United Kingdom's National Health Service reflects the April 2008 launch of Patient Choice, a program that allows Britons to compare hospitals, choose which specialists they wish to see, and book appointments online. It's the latest attempt by the mostly socialized NHS to introduce some market competition into health care delivery. The NHS site also features a guide to common health problems and advice on healthy living.
  • I am currently doing a MBA course on Healthcare Management !

    I am presently doing an MBA course on Healthcare Policy and Management as part of my elective courses of my MBA program. I am glad that this blog is of relevance to my studies!

    It is my firm belief that hard work does not go waste. When you work at something hard enough and long enough, it shall bear fruits some day!

    Cheers!
    Gerry Som.

    Four Models of Healthcare as per T.R. Reid

    4 models of healthcare:
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html
    1. Beveridge Model
    2. Bismarck Model
    3. National Health Insurance Model
    4. Out of Pocket model
    Details:
    There are about 200 countries on our planet, and each country devises its own set of arrangements for meeting the three basic goals of a health care system: keeping people healthy, treating the sick, and protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills.

    But we don't have to study 200 different systems to get a picture of how other countries manage health care. For all the local variations, health care systems tend to follow general patterns. There are four basic systems:

    Beveridge Model
    Named after William Beveridge, the daring social reformer who designed Britain's National Health Service. In this system, health care is provided and financed by the government through tax payments, just like the police force or the public library.

    Many, but not all, hospitals and clinics are owned by the government; some doctors are government employees, but there are also private doctors who collect their fees from the government. In Britain, you never get a doctor bill. These systems tend to have low costs per capita, because the government, as the sole payer, controls what doctors can do and what they can charge.

    Countries using the Beveridge plan or variations on it include its birthplace Great Britain, Spain, most of Scandinavia and New Zealand. Hong Kong still has its own Beveridge-style health care, because the populace simply refused to give it up when the Chinese took over that former British colony in 1997. Cuba represents the extreme application of the Beveridge approach; it is probably the world's purest example of total government control.


    Bismarck Model
    Named for the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who invented the welfare state as part of the unification of Germany in the 19th century. Despite its European heritage, this system of providing health care would look fairly familiar to Americans. It uses an insurance system -- the insurers are called "sickness funds" -- usually financed jointly by employers and employees through payroll deduction.

    Unlike the U.S. insurance industry, though, Bismarck-type health insurance plans have to cover everybody, and they don't make a profit. Doctors and hospitals tend to be private in Bismarck countries; Japan has more private hospitals than the U.S. Although this is a multi-payer model -- Germany has about 240 different funds -- tight regulation gives government much of the cost-control clout that the single-payer Beveridge Model provides.

    The Bismarck model is found in Germany, of course, and France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, and, to a degree, in Latin America.

    National Health Insurance Model
    This system has elements of both Beveridge and Bismarck. It uses private-sector providers, but payment comes from a government-run insurance program that every citizen pays into. Since there's no need for marketing, no financial motive to deny claims and no profit, these universal insurance programs tend to be cheaper and much simpler administratively than American-style for-profit insurance.

    The single payer tends to have considerable market power to negotiate for lower prices; Canada's system, for example, has negotiated such low prices from pharmaceutical companies that Americans have spurned their own drug stores to buy pills north of the border. National Health Insurance plans also control costs by limiting the medical services they will pay for, or by making patients wait to be treated.

    The classic NHI system is found in Canada, but some newly industrialized countries -- Taiwan and South Korea, for example -- have also adopted the NHI model.

    Out of Pocket model
    Only the developed, industrialized countries -- perhaps 40 of the world's 200 countries -- have established health care systems. Most of the nations on the planet are too poor and too disorganized to provide any kind of mass medical care. The basic rule in such countries is that the rich get medical care; the poor stay sick or die.

    In rural regions of Africa, India, China and South America, hundreds of millions of people go their whole lives without ever seeing a doctor. They may have access, though, to a village healer using home-brewed remedies that may or not be effective against disease.

    In the poor world, patients can sometimes scratch together enough money to pay a doctor bill; otherwise, they pay in potatoes or goat's milk or child care or whatever else they may have to give. If they have nothing, they don't get medical care.

    These four models should be fairly easy for Americans to understand because we have elements of all of them in our fragmented national health care apparatus. When it comes to treating veterans, we're Britain or Cuba. For Americans over the age of 65 on Medicare, we're Canada. For working Americans who get insurance on the job, we're Germany.

    For the 15 percent of the population who have no health insurance, the United States is Cambodia or Burkina Faso or rural India, with access to a doctor available if you can pay the bill out-of-pocket at the time of treatment or if you're sick enough to be admitted to the emergency ward at the public hospital.

    The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people. All the other countries have settled on one model for everybody. This is much simpler than the U.S. system; it's fairer and cheaper, too.

    Can USA learn something from the REST of the world about how to more efficiently run a Healthcare System? YES !

    Check out the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

    5 Capitalist democracies and how they do it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/
    1. UK
    2. Japan
    3. Germany
    4. Taiwan
    5. Switzerland
    Interviews: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/interviews/

    How does it work for the doctors in these 5 countries?
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/themes/doctors.html

    What lessons can USA learn from other countries?
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/themes/lessons.html

    Does Universal coverage mean Socialized Medicine?
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/themes/socialized.html

    What about the "Cost of Drugs" issue?
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/themes/drug.html

    Questions & Answers with Mr. T.R. Reid, author:
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/etc/notebook.html

    TR Ried in India for Ayurvedic treatment ---> A video:
    http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india701/video/video_index.html

    About Ayurveda:
    http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india701/interviews/ayurveda101.html

    4 models of healthcare:
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html

    Saturday, February 04, 2012

    Medical Tourism @ Bumrungrad International

    ABC News: Medical Tourism. First US Liver Transplant India

    Healthcare Beyond Borders

    T. R. Reid Part. 3

    T. R. Reid Part. 2

    T. R. Reid Part. 1

    Suzanne Gordon interviews TR Reid part 2

    Suzanne Gordon Interviews TR Reid Part 1

    Britain defends its health care against U.S. criticisms

    Sick Around the World: Japan. PBS Frontline part 2 of 2

    Germany's Health Care: Quality Care for All