Doctors and hospitals in Syracuse, New York, are looking north, to Canada, hoping to lure Canadians who are weary of waiting months for joint replacement surgeries and other procedures. The present wait time for a hip, knee or shoulder replacement is 39.4 weeks in Ontario, according to a report by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian research group. In Syracuse the same operation can be scheduled in a few weeks.
A Syracuse nonprofit development organization called The University Hill Corp., that represents hospitals and academic institutions, hopes to exploit that difference. The group hired an Ontario consulting firm that did a study that revealed that Syracuse may be able to lure a significant number of Eastern Ontario’s two million medical consumers who are only a 3-½ to 4-½ hour drive away.
According to the report, 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.
“We know there is a demand and it’s a market we can go after, ” said David Mankiewicz, president of The University Hill Corp. He added that some Canadians are already spending a lot to travel to Florida in the winter and get medical procedures done while there. “They fly over our heads to another market, ” he said. 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.
