Anthony Girand
Startup VoyagerMed is turning the notion of medical tourism on its head. Rather than finding lower-cost care for Americans overseas, the New York-based company is bringing people from around the world to doctors in the U.S.
And now, two-year-old VoyagerMed is preparing to launch a telehealth initiative aims to connect more Chinese patients to U.S. physicians.
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Typically, medical tourism is designed to help people travel to places where medical procedures are less expensive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 750,000 people travel from the U.S. to other countries for medical care each year.
Anthony Girand, founder and CEO of VoyagerMed, said that his company is targeting people who want serious treatments from the best doctors in the U.S. “It’s not necessarily the most affordable option,” he said, but pointed out that when a loved one is ill, money often is not the most important thing. Girand estimated that approximately 400,000 people come to the U.S. each year for treatment.
In places such as Dubai, there are some excellent clinics and facilities, but “medicine is very, very defensive,” according to Girand. “Criminal sanctions, not just civil suits, can be brought in cases of malpractice.”
Girand described a patient who had a terrible deformity in his hands who hadn’t been able to get satisfactory care. “We set up a video consultation with a doctor in Miami. The [patient’s] entire family was there and in half an hour the doctor was able to make a prognosis,” he said. That family is its way from Dubai to Miami now for a procedure.
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Of course, there are two sides in developing any market. In this case, finding patients who want to travel to receive care is half the equation; the other is finding doctors who are interested in providing that care. Girand said that hasn’t been a problem.
“We try to take what the Cleveland Clinics and MD Andersons of the world are doing and bring it down to the level of an individual doctor,” he said. For physicians who are not affiliated with a big center, Girand said VoyagerMed can bring medical tourism to their doors.
Another plus for physicians is that the vast majority of patients who use VoyagerMed pay cash. “One of the reasons doctors like it is that 80 percent is cash pay. There are none of the headaches or red tape that go along with insurance companies and reimbursements,” Girand said.
The telehealth product soon to launch will provide an additional service to patients, allowing them to have real-time conversations with care providers. “One of the things we’ve learned in bringing people here is that people don’t just look at a website, make a choice and jump on a plane,” Girand said.
The direct video consultation product should allow patients to make more informed decisions.
Girand himself is a cancer survivor of 23 years, and was more recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He said that he is getting a first-hand look at how things have changed since the 1990s, in terms of trying to navigate the complex maze of insurance, reimbursements and everything else that comes with getting treatment.
“Imagine doing that from the other side of the planet or from another state,” he said.
