Insurer rejects overseas surgery

Graeme Hawkins, chairman of Southern Cross Insurance. Photo / Natalie Slade

New Zealand's biggest health insurer has looked at sending patients overseas for cheap surgery and procedures but rejected it because most members shun the notion, even though some cost savings could be high.

Southern Cross Medical Care Society, with more than 830,000 members, found India best because expensive procedures are cheapest but Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand offered big cost savings for specialist work.

Southern Cross is under pressure from its steadily ageing membership to cut costs, after investor advocate Bruce Sheppard won a battle to have the society examine ways to hold the elderly's punitive premiums down.

Southern Cross was forced to announce a premium investigation when Sheppard said it should distribute about $30 million annual interest on its $334.4 million reserves, increase younger people's premiums, and investigate reverse annuity mortgages for the elderly, enabling them to draw money out of their houses to pay health premiums.

A team formed to report to the board about overseas medical options found savings were only available in $20,000-plus procedures and only 15 per cent of members surveyed would consider overseas treatment for such major surgery.

"It appears that procedures with an average cost in New Zealand of $15,000 could be accessed in India at a lower overall cost even when factoring in travel and accommodation costs," the report said.

"The financial threshold is likely to be higher for procedures in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia with overall savings potentially achieved for procedures with an average New Zealand cost of $20,000 to $25,000. Cardiac procedures that cost upward of $40,000 are likely to yield per-procedure savings of many thousands of dollars in all four countries," the team said.

A shopping basket of treatments or procedures was used to compare prices but the team found members thought home was the best place when they were sick.

"Members in general believe they will receive a better quality of treatment in New Zealand. Members are least comfortable with the countries that are most likely to yield claims savings."

"Research and empirical evidence suggests that prospective medical travellers are - paraphrasing one commentator - predominantly the uninsured, the under-insured and the uninsurable," the team reported.

Deep vein thrombosis, superbugs and other travel risks associated with surgery were taken into account, as well as members travelling long distances when they were sick.

"There would be little or no benefit for the membership in the society pursuing overseas treatment options at this time," the team said.

UNDER THE KNIFE

Some of the most popular Southern Cross operations:

* Total hip replacement

* Total knee replacement

* Cataract extraction

* Colonoscopy

* Angioplasty

* Rotator cuff repair

* Prostatectomy

* Radiotherapy