| To support Nigerians and Africans seeking medical help in the US, there is something called Medical Concerige Services (MCS), says Adeola Akinremi, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based MCS. “We feel pained that people come here and get stranded,” says Adeleke. “It is not useful to travel miles and get to the US only to become stranded and not know what hospital to go to or what medical expert to consult – and in the process end up spending more for less.”MCS operates as a healthcare hospitality service for Nigerians and other Africans who seek medical help abroad. “We started MCS as a response to bottlenecks of finding and establishing contacts with a specialist hospital in the US by foreign patients coming from Nigeria and Africa. It is the traditional model of international medical travel support where patients generally journey from less developed nations to major medical centers in highly developed countries for medical treatment that is unavailable in their own communities, without having to go through the trouble involved,” he says. MCS provides first-class healthcare services and has an excellent reputation for personalized services, custom-tailored to each patient. Adeleke says, “All treatments are performed by the best specialist at state-of-the-art facilities. We help to find the most affordable quotes for our clients and also help to arrange their appointments. MCS is the one-stop resource for accessing premium medical services in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. Our concierge approach helps reduce the stress of looking for a physician or waiting for a referral to see a specialist. We organize our clients’ medical appointments to ensure a hassle-free visit to the physician/specialist based on our vast network of medical professionals, knowledge of the medical industry standards and experience. Other services we offer include airport pickup, transportation services to and from all medical appointments, as well as other ancillary needs. We offer assistance with logistics such as hotel accommodation and short-term lease apartments for clients who require such service.” In the US, healthcare remains complex, especially to those paying for these services out-of-pocket. MSC is committed to making the medical experience smooth and stress-free, offering various forms of medical packages that include: prenatal and delivery packages for pregnant women, executive health physicals for men and women, age and gender appropriate health physicals and cancer screening, annual physicals, job physicals, screening colonoscopy, and medical referral programs for specialist evaluation. For Nigerians, improvement in healthcare services across the country is of major concern, as federal medical centers and teaching hospitals remain ill-equipped, under-staffed and under-funded. The increased burden of preventable diseases such as polio, malaria, cholera and heart- related diseases that have now over-stretched Nigeria’s healthcare facilities, and lack of improvement in medical services is forcing more Nigerians, who can afford it, to seek better healthcare services abroad. According to a 2012 BGL report on Nigeria’s healthcare system, infrastructure decay, brain drain, incessant workers’ strikes and low investment in the sector are the norm. Collectively, all tiers of the healthcare system have suffered. In 2011, national spending on teaching hospitals and federal medical centers was estimated at N204 billion, approximately 79 percent of the government’s health expenditure. However, only N20.25 billion (10 percent of total hospital expenditure) was allotted to capital expenditure in spite of insufficient medical equipment. In the BGL report, the Federal Ministry of Health alluded to the fact that the human development indices for Nigeria were among the worst in the world. Nigeria shoulders 10 percent of the global disease burden, and is making slow progress towards achieving the 2015 targets for the MDGs on healthcare. Instructively, healthcare delivery indices in Nigeria have largely remained below country targets and internationally set benchmarks due to weaknesses inherent in the system. Chief medical director at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Prof. Akin Osibogun, says medical tourism is a global phenomenon, stating that there are several reasons why people all over the world leave their countries for medical assistance abroad. According to Prof. Osibogun, “Medical tourism is a global phenomenon. People travel from the United States to Cuba for medical assistance too. It is the human spirit, which is adventurous. People go on medical tourism trips for issues of privacy and preference.” Usually concierge physicians care for fewer patients than in a conventional practice, ranging from 100 patients per doctor to 1,000, instead of the 3,000 to 4,000 that the average physician now sees every year, especially in the US. The concierge physicians generally claim to be accessible via cell phone or email at any time of day or night, or offer some other special service above and beyond the normal care provided, and their annual fees vary widely for an individual. Some concierge practices do not accept insurance of any kind. These are also referred to as cash-only or direct primary care practices. By refusing to deal with insurance companies, these practices seek to keep overhead and administrative costs low, thereby providing affordable healthcare to patients. And they are called “concierge” only if the practice assesses an annual or monthly fee instead of, or in addition to, a fee for each medical service. While concierge patients get a special contact number, dedicated appointment time, and various other benefits that enable the doctor to offer more advice and advocacy, the quality of the care, Adeleke says, remains the same for patients, and it is all about cost control. |
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