Mexico Builds Hospitals to Lure Medical Tourists From America

The only way Bridget Flanagan, a 21-year-old college student from Olympia, Washington, could afford the obesity surgery she needed was to go to Mexico. Her health insurance didn't cover the treatment.

Traveling 2,000 miles for gastric banding surgery at Hospital San Jose in Monterrey, Mexico, saved her $6,600, making it affordable. The procedure was a success, allowing five-foot- tall Bridget to drop 45 pounds so far off her peak weight of 275.

Health-care companies and investors see a new market in patients like Flanagan. Tecnologico de Monterrey, the private university that owns San Jose Hospital, plans a $100 million medical center in Monterrey. Grupo Star Medica, the builder of seven Mexican centers in five years, is accelerating an expansion aimed at Americans, funded partly by billionaire Carlos Slim.

``This is a great opportunity not only for Mexico, but also to reduce health costs in the U.S.,'' said Marco Antonio Slim Domit, Carlos Slim's son and chief executive officer of his Mexico City brokerage Grupo Financiero Inbursa SAB. The firm took an undisclosed stake in Star Medica, a privately held hospital chain based in Morelia, Michoacan, in southern Mexico.

While Mexican authorities declined to estimate how much the country's health-care industry is expanding to handle medical tourism, companies are building new hospitals, clinics and surgical centers.

Industry Expansion

U.S.-based companies are also investing in Mexico. Christus Health, a nonprofit based in Irving, Texas, owns six hospitals in Mexico after opening one in Reynosa near McAllen, Texas. Dallas-based International Hospital Corp., the operator of three hospitals in Mexico, is building a fourth in the central city of Puebla.

Grupo Empresarial Los Angeles, Mexico's largest private hospital chain, is spending $700 million to build 15 hospitals over the next three years, said Victor Ramirez, the chief operating officer of the company's hospital unit. Oca Hospital, a family-owned company in Monterrey, is building a 200-bed facility there.

``In diverse cities that are attractive to Americans, we can offer hospitals that are very competitive and at a very good price,'' Ramirez said.

Grupo Angeles has a marketing campaign targeting Americans. The goal is for foreigners to make up 20 percent of patients within two years, up from 5 percent now, Ramirez said. At the company's hospital in Tijuana, Americans accounted for 40 percent of the 100,000 patients the facility admitted in 2007, he said.

Medical Spending

Health spending in Mexico in 2005 was about $49 billion, or 6.4 percent of gross domestic product. In the U.S., the world's biggest economy with a population almost three times Mexico's, health-care spending reached $2.2 trillion last year, 16 percent of all goods and services.

The number of private hospital beds in Mexico rose 28 percent to 34,576 in 2005 from 27,015 in 2000, according to the census bureau. Private doctors more than doubled to 55,173 from 21,565 during the same period. Surgery rooms in private hospitals jumped 46 percent to 4,545 in 2005 from 3,115 in 2000.

U.S. employers are prodding insurance companies to lower costs by providing incentives for workers to travel abroad for treatment. About 47 million Americans lack health insurance altogether.

For decades Mexico has attracted U.S. residents looking for cheap, basic health care. Border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, are dotted with clinics hawking bargain dental braces or discount eye exams and pharmacies that sell prescription medicines over the counter.

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