With insurers demanding discounted rates in the 1990s, Johns Hopkins and other prestigious hospitals looked to bolster the bottom line by luring international patients.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Visitors, particularly from the Middle East, had more trouble getting visas to enter the United States, and the flow of international patients became more of a trickle.
Now, instead of bringing patients to Baltimore, Hopkins is going where the patients are.
In the past few months, representatives of Johns Hopkins Medicine International have been jetting to ribbon cuttings and announcing new deals. Just this year, gleaming new Hopkins-affiliated hospitals opened in Beirut, Lebanon, and Panama City, Panama. Hopkins announced a consulting deal for a hospital in Dublin, Ireland, due to open this summer. It began a "co-branded" Center for Safety, Quality and Management with a technical institute in Monterrey, Mexico.
And, as debate raged in the United States about whether a firm from the United Arab Emirates should manage operations at American ports, Hopkins inked its first management contract to run an overseas hospital, in the UAE state of Abu Dhabi.
It's the largest burst of activity since Hopkins launched its international division in 1998 with the opening of a micro-Hopkins in Singapore. Now those seeds are blossoming, giving Hopkins an edge as it raises its flag worldwide to enhance its brand and prestige and widen the net for revenue.
"We don't advertise, but through this use of our brand, we are marketing the Johns Hopkins Health System throughout the world," said Steve J. Thompson, chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine International.
While other big-name American hospitals and medical schools were later to the starting line, somewhere between a dozen and two dozen are seeking patients - and income - overseas.
Harvard advises on a "health care city" in Dubai, UAE, and the Mayo Clinic runs a cardiology center in Dubai as well. Cleveland Clinic owns a small piece of a hospital in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. Cornell has a full-scale medical school in Doha, Qatar. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center operates a transplant facility in Palermo, Italy, and is developing two cancer centers in Ireland.
Because most of these projects are in the early stages, evidence is still thin as to how closely they match the quality of the American institutions that are advising them. It's also unclear whether they can be a significant money generator for academic medical institutions in the United States.
