Wiese.jpg

Dr. Michael Wiese, right, performs a left hip arthroscopy on a patient at Crouse Hospital with help from certified surgical technician Colin Joyce.

(Ellen M. Blalock | eblalock@syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Local hospitals and doctors would like to hawk their services to Canadians weary of waiting months in their country for knee replacement surgeries, colonoscopies, cancer treatment and other medical procedures.

Canadians get most of their medical care for free through their government's health care system. But the waits are getting longer because of a doctor shortage and overcrowded clinics and emergency rooms.

The median wait time to see a specialist in Canada is 18.3 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian research group.

Ontario residents wait an average of nine months to get a knee replacement or other orthopedic surgery. In Syracuse, the same operation can be had in a few weeks.



The University Hill Corp., a Syracuse nonprofit planning and development organization that represents hospitals and academic institutions, hopes to exploit that difference. The group hired Electric Strategies, an Ontario consulting firm, that did a study that says Syracuse may be able to lure a significant number of Eastern Ontario's 2 million medical consumers who are only a 3 1/2- to 4 1/2-hour drive away.

As many as 900,000 Ontarians are experiencing problems accessing medical care, a problem that is expected to get worse and send more of them across the border for health care, according to the report.

"We know there is a demand and it's a market we can go after," said David Mankiewicz, president of the University Hill Corp.

Syracuse hospitals and doctors already get some Canadian patients, but have not seen many coming here because of the waits in Canada, Mankiewicz said.

They seek care after twisting an ankle or experiencing another health emergency while visiting the area, Mankiewicz said. There also are some Syracuse doctors here who attract foreign patients. "We're trying to see if we can drive those numbers up and get more patients here," Mankiewicz said.

University Hill Corp. is working with Visit Syracuse, formerly known as the Syracuse Convention & Visitors Bureau, on the medical tourism project.

The hospital bill alone for knee replacement surgery in Syracuse can be $20,000 or more. Are there enough Canadians who can afford to pay out of pocket for big medical bills like that?

Some Canadians are already spending a lot to travel to Florida in the winter and get medical procedures while there, according to Mankiewicz . "They fly over our heads to another market," he said. Some also go to Buffalo for health care.

A growing number of Canadian businesses buy private health insurance for their executives so they can seek care outside the Canadian system and not be sidelined for extended periods of time by health problems, Mankiewicz said.

An estimated 52,513 Canadians left the country to get non-emergency medical treatment in 2014, an increase of 26 percent compared to 2013, according to the Fraser Institute. Of all Canadian provinces, Ontario had the largest number of patients who left the country for medical care -- 26,252.

The consultant's report says nearly 149,000 Ontarians wait for procedures annually. If Syracuse attracted just 1 percent of them that would translate into visits by about 1,500 Canadian patients annually. In addition to spending on medical services, those patients and their families would stimulate the local economy by spending on hotels, meals, transportation and shopping, the report says.

The consultant is now studying how Syracuse can best advertise itself as a medical tourism destination to Ontarians.

University Hill Corp. and Visit Syracuse are brainstorming to come up with a way to offer package deals to Canadian medical tourists.

They want to create a concierge service Canadians could call to line up a physician, book a hotel room and arrange transportation.

"We'd like to come up with a complete package and one invoice," Mankiewicz said. "The whole idea is to make it easy for people to come down."

Wait times for selected surgeries in Ontario

A consulting firm identified these specialties as the best prospects for attracting medical tourists to Syracuse from Ontario. They are based on patient wait times in Ontario and the capacity of medical providers in Syracuse.

Surgery Wait time (weeks) General surgery: intestinal operation, bariatric surgery, colonoscopy, hernia 8.8 Gynecology: hysterectomy 13.7 Internal Medicine: colonoscopy 8.6 Medical Oncology: radiotherapy 3.8 Ophthalmology: cataract removal 14.4 Orthopedic surgery: hip, knee, ankle, shoulder 34.9 Otolaryngology: tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy 17.9 Radiation Oncology: chemotherapy 2.3 Urology: cystoscopy, hernia, bladder fulguration 10.4

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