12/30/2009 10:00:00 AM Medical Tourism: Cottonwood man travels to New Zealand for surgery
Ben Wordinger, owner of Adobe Refrigeration in Cottonwood, recently traveled to New Zealand for shoulder replacement surgery. He said the procedure cost him one-sixth of what it would have in the United States. VVN/Philip Wright
COTTONWOOD - Ben Wordinger of Cottonwood recently traveled to New Zealand for a shoulder replacement. While he and his wife, Susanne, were there, they combined some sightseeing with Ben's recovery.
Ben had been suffering with serious shoulder pain for years. Now 51, Ben's shoulder problems started when he was 14 and active in gymnastics. He said that injury had healed, and he played sports all through high school and college.
As an athlete, and with Ben's career as an engineer in the military side of the aero-space industry, he had physical examinations throughout much of his life.
"From 14 to 40 I was perfectly healthy," he said. It was after 40, when Ben got up one morning and simply stretched. "Something popped."
That was his rotator cuff. He had one surgery. And then a second. "The second surgery was because they didn't do the first surgery right," Ben said.
He explained that a bone chip had been left between his shoulder ball and socket. Understandably, it was causing him a tremendous amount of pain. After the second surgery Ben's insurance company told him that nothing more with that shoulder would be covered.
In 2003, Ben moved from Tucson to Cottonwood. His left shoulder really started hurting again.
"I'd been to four specialists," Ben said, "two in Phoenix and two in Cottonwood. They told me I'm too young to have a shoulder replacement. It took me awhile to figure out what that meant."
Ben said he was doing research into his shoulder problem and discovered that the surgery was being done on teenagers. He said he does know that surgeons are cautious about shoulder replacement procedures with people under 40 because two such surgeries is the limit one person can handle.
Ben thinks he knows why surgeons were telling him he was too young for the surgery.
"What I found out is that I'm too young to qualify for Medicare and I'm self-insured," Ben said.
But he had been on strong pain medication for six years. "I needed to be able to function without pain," he said. Ben owns Adobe Refrigeration in Cottonwood, and he needed full use of his shoulder and arm, and he needed to be off the strong medication.
"That's when I started looking into Medtral," he said. A friend at Ben's church had used the New Zealand medical travel company and was satisfied. So Ben went online to investigate the company and the procedures Medtral can set up.
Ben said that medical tourism is growing rapidly because many self-insured or underinsured people simply cannot afford to pay for major medical procedures out of pocket.
He liked the idea that New Zealand is an English-speaking country. "I'm an English only speaking individual," he said.
Before Ben could sign a contract for his shoulder surgery, he had to have more tests done and send a great amount of information to the doctors in New Zealand. "It took me the better part of six months to get all of the testing done," he said.
Once the testing was done, the contract signed, the money sent and the medical visa obtained, it was time to schedule the trip.
That process began in June and Ben and Susanne headed to Ascot Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand around the first of September.
Ben said his procedure would have cost him between $80,000 and $130,000 if done in the United States. But because he is self-employed, he didn't want to spend that much money. He said the cost for his trip to New Zealand included the surgery, doctors' fees, hospital fees, airfare, local transportation and local accommodations.
Ben said the shoulder replacement in New Zealand cost him one-sixth of what it would have cost in the United States.
The entire trip, including pre-op, surgery and recovery, took three weeks. And that included a sightseeing tour.
Now Ben is regaining muscle strength in his shoulder and following a course of physical therapy. He said it was really tough at first, and he knows he will have to be careful how he uses his shoulder. "I have to know my limitations," he said.
But the most important part of all of this is easy for Ben to identify.
