Vacation Travelers Group Blog

Lets face it, dental work can be painful on your mouth and sometimes even more painful on your wallet.

If you need crowns, or root canals it can cost tens of thousands of dollars. It’s something most of us will face sooner or later. But some people are finding alternatives to those high prices in a tropical land in South America.

“Don’t get me wrong. I was, definitely had apprehension at first and that’s the reason it’s taken me so long to go,” said Denise Rutherford.

But Denise Rutherford says she realized she couldn’t pass up the price.  CBS 12 met her as she was packing her bags for a dental vacation. An 18 day trip to Costa Rica.

“I know six people who have been through this now. I have researched it for over a month and a half. And I am very excited to be going to where I am,” said Rutherford.

Denise tells us she needs work on five of her teeth. She says she has shopped around South Florida for a deal. But her jaw dropped at the estimates.

“All five teeth would have cost me $18,200 here in the United States,” said Rutherford.

That’s when she says she first started considering Costa Rica as an alternative. She says her friends recommended a specific dentist and some of her fears were calmed by videos on the internet. She even contacted one dentist over the phone.

“The dentist assured me, “Denise, you come back over anytime. If there’s something not right, we will make it right. I promise you, at our expense,” said Rutherford.

So she boarded a plane from Fort Lauderdale to San Jose. When she arrived what she saw exceeded her expectations.

“They were very happy to see me. The clinic was spotlessly clean,” said Rutherford.

“There are some good dentists in Costa Rica. But there are a lot of dentists who are not well trained,” said Jim Quick.

Jim Quick is a Jupiter-based board certified dentist, who is also an attorney specializing in dental malpractice.

He says if you are going abroad for dental work, Costa Rica is one of the best options. But buyer beware: The dentist may be competent, but unlike in the United States patients don’t always know what materials are being used.

“There’s been studies that have shown that some of the materials that have been put in patients mouths contain lead and that’s very dangerous,” said Quick.

And if there is a problem, he says patients have no recourse.

“I had a crown, root canal, two crowns, and another crown,” said Rutherford.

Plus four more, the total came to just over $2,200. That’s $16,000 less than it would have cost in the U.S., Denise says the recovery was a still pretty rough.

“That’s a lot of work to get done on your teeth,” said Rutherford.

Even so, she made the most of her vacation, zip-lining through the rainforest, white water rafting, and hitting the Costa Rican coast. Now that she’s home, she says she’s thrilled with the results.

“They are nice, I’m very pleased,” said Rutherford.

Jim Quick says if you are going to follow in Denise’s foot steps – do what she did and make sure you research every aspect of your dental vacation. Or it could cost you more than you ever imagined.

“You are taking a chance that the work is not going to be done correctly and it will have to be redone in the United States and you’ll be out whatever money you paid for the dentistry in the foreign country,” said Quick.

We asked around to see if these people traveling to South America and other places would have an effect on the cost of dental work. In effect, are local dentists willing to lower their prices to keep people here? In most cases the answer is no. But the cost of dental work is coming down a little. The economy is having an effect, and there’s more competition.

Just how are these dentists able to offer these much lower prices? The patients often pay cash and it goes directly to the dentists. So you cut out the insurance companies, and there is far less regulation. But the materials may not be the same quality.

Stuck with an aching tooth and very little cash, Brennan Mulligan was faced with a painful dilemma:

Wait weeks to get a dental procedure in the city that he couldn’t afford or fly off to see an unfamiliar dentist in a foreign country at a fraction of the cost.

Mulligan, a 23-year-old uninsured Manhattan bartender, chose the latter.

Within five days, he was inside a gleaming dental office in Costa Rica. His severely damaged tooth was extracted and replaced with a metal implant for $1,500. He said New York dentists told him the same procedure would have cost more than $7,500 in the city.

“Everybody was saying, ‘You’re going to this shack in thejungle in Costa Rica and there’sgoing to be a witch doctor there,’” said Mulligan, who had the work done outside thecapital city of San Jose in mid-July.

“I got there and it looked like the Starship Enterprise. It was beautiful … and the dentist was probably the best dentist I had ever been to.”

Mulligan is part of a rapidly growing wave of Americans who have gone overseas for medical treatment.

Less than 10 years ago, “medical tourism” was considered a dirty word in U.S. medical circles. The phrase conjured images of shady doctors performing unregulated procedures in dingy back alleys.

Now, lured by cheaper costs and top-class facilities and doctors, hundreds of thousands of Americans are opting to get their teeth fixed, hips replaced and eggs fertilized overseas each year.

Read more

Global Health Voyager Inc., a full service Web-based medical tourism company, has signed an agreement with the oldest private hospital in Costa Rica, Clinica Biblica. GHV’s Ali Moussavi, the company CEO, had high praise for his new partner.

“Hospital Clinica Biblica utilizes state-of-the-art ‘smart operating rooms’ offering equipment found only in the most sophisticated health care facilities and advanced instrumentation that provides efficiency and positive patient outcomes,” Moussavi added.

Growth of medical tourism in this country has been one of its most unalloyed success stories. Beginning decades ago with a few pioneering bilingual cosmetic surgeons, treatment of foreign patients has expanded into the most technical areas of treatment.

Clinica Biblica has been at the forefront of this trend for decades and the establishment of other private medical operations has reinforced what has become an industry in its own right. The GHV press release, for example, pointed out that many of the hospital’s physicians are U.S.-trained and that it offers “a desirable nurse-to-patient ratio.”

Clinical Biblica is one of the first hospitals certified by Blue Cross/Blue Shield a number of years ago and has since been recognized by several more international health and medical organizations.

As the fame of the country’s medical quality has grown, so has confidence in its own home-grown medical training in public universities as well as in such private facilities as Universidad Latina. At the heart of the growth is, of course, that patient costs for first-class care have remained stable and low.

This has been important in industrialized nations such as the United States where, in recent years, prices have skyrocketed. Add to this the uncertainty and political turmoil surrounding the U.S. health insurance issue in the United States and one has the formula for continued growth in this field here.

The tourism facet is also attractive to foreign patients. Not only is Costa Rica a prime tourism destination, in recent years allied recovery facilities have made post treatment more pleasant. that is an advantage of which few industrialized countries can boast.

“We were paying $1,800/month for health insurance…and we’re not sickly people. So essentially we paid $1,800 every month and the only thing we got in return was an occasional doctor’s visit.”

Andy and Fran began intently searching for fairness in an unfair world. Luckily, they found it.

Three years ago, Andy and Fran (then in their late 50s) did something extraordinary—which turned out to be exactly the right thing for them to do.

They sold out of the U.S. and moved to Costa Rica. They’re happy here. And not only that, but they’ve reduced their annual expenses by 65%. Their cost of living in Costa Rica (and Fran keeps impeccable budget records) is just $2,500 per month. And that includes their health insurance and health care costs!

How did they do it? And why did they choose Costa Rica? We discovered all those details and more today during Day 1 of International Living’s Live and Invest in Costa Rica Seminar 2011.

I’m Suzan Haskins and I’m your Conference Insider, reporting to you from San Jose, Costa Rica. I wish you were here, too—we’re learning why this country makes so much sense for those who….like Andy and Fran Browne…are looking to find a way to stretch their modest incomes yet enjoy the same top quality of life as if they were still working.

Andy and Fran are definitely enjoying life and spending less to do so in Costa Rica. They’re hanging out on boogie boards instead of in board rooms and are playing with their two dogs on the beach instead of coming home dog-tired after a day at office.

“We’re living better, feeling better and having a kick-ass time,” Andy reports enthusiastically as Fran adds: “We live in a two-bedroom, two-bath house with pool, a fenced yard for our dogs, and it’s a five-minute walk to the beach where I go every day. And we pay $1,000 a month for it. We couldn’t do that in the States.

“If we turned 65 today, would we go back home? No way. We’re having too much fun.”

Lower Costs and Less Stress in Costa Rica

Andy and Fran shared their monthly budget and their strategy for stretching their money as far as possible (and simplifying their lives as much as possible).

They also shared their #1 tip for success in Costa Rica. Makes sense to me and it will to you, too, when you learn what it is. Follow their lead and your life will cost far less and cause you much less stress indeed.

We also heard from Costa Rican attorney Roger Petersen. (If this guy’s not in your offshore rolodex, he should be.)

Roger shared LOTS of information today (with more to come tomorrow), including that you can live infinitum in Costa Rica as a perpetual tourist. He knows a guy, in fact, who has been here 10 years on a tourist visa.

But just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should…

Roger says that if you want to live in Costa Rica, the best plan of attack is to get residency status. (Don’t confuse this with citizenship—you needn’t give up your home citizenship to live legally in Costa Rica.)

What’s the difference between a pensionado and a rentista visa? Roger explained. How… read more

More than 60 per cent of Canadians would be willing to leave the country for medical procedures if they were covered by health care, according to an upcoming report by an international consulting firm.

Medical tourism is a growing industry, said Mark Fam, a senior manager with Deloitte’s National Health Services. The industry is divided into two sectors: inbound, the number of patients traveling into a country to receive treatment; and outbound, those traveling outside the country.

In terms of outbound, “over two per cent of Canadians right now are already traveling outside the country to receive services,” Fam told CTV News Channel.

According to the report, to be entitled ”Evolving medical tourism in Canada — Exploring a new frontier,” this presents insurance companies an opportunity to provide additional coverage that includes medical tourism; and also offers Canadian hospitals a chance to free up bed space.

Procedures sought outside Canada include cosmetic operations, fertility treatments and cardiac care.

The issue made headlines last year when former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams traveled to a Florida hospital for heart surgery — proof, according to critics of public health care, that a private system is better.

“Provincial governments have the opportunity to encourage citizens to seek out procedures abroad to alleviate their health systems’ wait times, improve access to care and also position Canada as a medical tourism destination…” the report says. “But before doing this, governments should determine if the cost of medical tourism services be less than the delivery of services locally.”

In addition to speedier care, the benefits of traveling abroad to receive treatment can include the prospect of receiving cutting-edge treatment and a chance to relax.

Many patients treat it as a vacation, said Farm. Still, patients need to be diligent and ask questions about the facility they are visiting, post-op recover time and treatment options, he said.

In addition to individual benefits, there are also broad economic advantages.

According to a 2009 Deloitte report, the outbound medical tourism industry could reach up to 1.6 million patients by 2012. Many patients travel to countries such as India, Thailand and Costa Rica where governments are aggressively vying for a bigger share of the estimated $40 billion industry.

Last year, India’s government backed a three-day conference at the Toronto’s Metro Convention Center.  Sponsors included Indian private health care companies and firms that specialize in medical tourism, hoping to attract more Canadian medical tourism dollars.

Currently, medical tourism is unregulated in Canada.

If Canadian hospitals were allowed to sell services for “inbound” medical tourism, Farm said it could be a win-win situation. “It’s an opportunity to bring in foreign travelers and receive additional funds in the system which actually can be used to provide more services to Canadians here.”

Opponents of medical tourism are concerned the industry promotes a two-tiered system that favors the wealthy.

Farm said however, that it’s not…read more

Getting Your Kidney Stones Removed Fast and Affordably in Costa Rica

I have had kidney stones! I have also labored and delivered three children, broken bones, and was a competitive gymnast in my youth. All of these things represent a great deal of pain but nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to the pain that I endured battling kidney stones.

It is no joke or exaggeration, the pain is excruciating and can take a long time to resolve.

What Is A Kidney Stone?

A kidney stone is a solid crystal that forms in the kidneys from dissolved urinary minerals. Most stones pass via the urinary tract, but some become lodged or are simply too large to pass once they leave the kidney.

Most are formed by a type of calcium some from urea or other minerals and most are passed unrecognizably to the person. The problem is when the stone gets so large that it causes extreme pain and bleeding upon passing.

The first step is to determine if what you are experiencing is indeed a kidney stone. This can be done via ultrasound, Xray, or CT scan, among other tests.

What these tests will show is that you do indeed have a stone but more importantly it can tell you the size as well. This will be important to know so that a proper treatment plan can be put into place.

According to the Mayo clinic about 85% of stones will pass on their own with no medical intervention necessary. They pass usually within 72 hours helped along by taking in lots of water. For the other 15% it can be a long journey of pain, bleeding, and general malaise. Pain medication is almost always needed and some times surgical intervention is the only way to remove the stone.

There are several methods of minimally invasive treatments available to help get rid of kidney stones:

External Shock Wave Lithotripsy.

The most common treatment uses shock waves on the outside of the body to break up the stone into smaller fragments so that it can be passed more easily in the urine. It is a treatment best used for stones that are 1cm or smaller. The procedure takes about an hour and can be done under sedation, local, or general anesthesia.

There are few side effects but some are bruising, blood in the urine, and discomfort when passing the granule size stones and the recovery time is minimal.

The cost in the US for this procedure averages US$15,000 at the time this article is written.

You will be pleased to know that the solution for your kidney stone problems in Costa Rica will be significantly more affordable.

Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy.

When the stone is too large for lithotripsy or when the lithotripsy was ineffective in helping to pass the stone, this treatment is usually the next option. The patient will need general anesthesia and a small incision on the back.

A nephroscope is used to break up and extract ALL the fragments of the…read more from the original source

Medical tourism companies, doctors, hotel managers and tour operators piled into the Hotel Ramada Plaza Herradura for two days, touting Latin America’s medical tourism benefits from the industry’s most popular site, San José.

But on Wednesday, the last day of Costa Rica’s second-annual Medical Travel Summit, organizers opted for a change of scenery. Carloads of attendees headed to the northwestern province of Guanacaste on Tuesday night. There they received a four-hour tour of the Papagayo Peninsula, including Marina Papagayo, an elegant Four Seasons Resort and also a newly constructed CIMA hospital.

“This is an opportunity to involve different areas of Costa Rica in medical tourism,” said Massimo Manzi, executive director of PROMED, a company that promotes medical procedures in Costa Rica. “Until now, the [Central Valley] is just having the benefits of medical tourism because this is where the hospitals are.”

The excursion was an opportunity to promote a growing Guanacaste, which has new medical facilities, an expanding airport and a sprawling 900-hectare retirement community under development, called Sun Ranch. Even as the tour took place, a new luxury hotel, Sol Meliá Paradisus Resort, announced plans to open in Guanacaste in 2013.

The trip helped flaunt Guanacaste’s glossy future to medical tourism leaders. It also showed potential tourists what Guanacaste is not – San José.

Costa Rica’s grubby capital remains the leader for medical tourism in Central America, with its state-of-the-art hospitals and U.S.-trained doctors. But Guanacaste hopes for a share of that market. And for an obvious reason, industry insiders think it’s possible.

“Let’s face it,” said Jerad Portner, marketing director for Sun Ranch. “If you have the choice to go to San José or the choice to do the same exact work by the same top professionals and you’re a 15-minute drive the from the beach, I think it’s a pretty easy decision to make.”

Guanacaste’s medical tourism push highlighted the three-day Medical Travel Summit. The congress hosted more than 40 international speakers, 150 companies and nine countries from North and South America and Thailand.

Dental clinics outnumbered the rest of the booths at the conference. Medical suppliers, plastic surgeons and bariatric doctors also promoted why those looking for cheap, quality medical service should head to Latin America.

In 2009, 30,000 medical tourists visited Costa Rica. Almost all of them received their treatment in San José, and patients recovered through vacation packages that took them around the country. The medical tourism industry brings in $60 million annually to Costa Rica, and the projected figure for 2011 is a hefty $100 million, according to PROMED.

If Guanacaste can become the next medical tourism hotspot, the number will continue to rise. The key to the region’s growth will be a cutting-edge $125 million CIMA hospital opening in the fourth quarter of 2011 (TT, Jan. 29, 2010).

CIMA hospitals are international medical facilities built in underserved parts of the world. Both locals and foreigners are treated at these hospitals. Approximately, 5,000 medical tourists were treated at the San José branch in 2009, Manzi said.

Joseph Barcie, president of CIMA Centralized Services, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, in the U.S., emphasized that a contemporary hospital can help develop a city. He pointed to the current CIMA building in San José, for example.

“When CIMA San José was built, around that entire hospital was nothing but fields and grass,” Barcie said. “Now, 12 years later, Escazú is a hub and they’re still building.”

He imagines the same type of growth in Guanacaste in the next decade. Nearby, in the province’s capital city of Liberia, the Daniel Oduber Airport is adding a new terminal. The airport continues to add direct flights to the United States, making it easier to fly in and arrive at a hospital that’s less than an hour from the beach. Other hospitals also have tentative plans to build in Guanacaste.

One hospital already settled in Liberia is adding a new…Read more

Costa Rica Accommodations

There are a lot more options than the well publicized “Gringo” communities.

I will share with you my first hand experiences with the medical, pharmaceutical, insurance systems, banking, residency application, shopping, legal, real estate, rents, transportation, restaurants, the monthly cost of phone, electricity, water, Direct TV, Internet service, and gas. If you decide to move here, there are many factors to consider in deciding what to bring with you, (the cost and method) and what to buy here.

Nearly nine years of touring many types of people from many parts of the world reinforces my belief that there is no universal perfect location. Almost everyone who lives here in Costa Rica claims they have very close to their ideal set of conditions. Of course, there are many people who choose to live in Minnesota with its mosquitoes and extreme temperatures or Florida with its mosquitoes, rain, heat, and Hurricanes.

This is why I encourage all guests to keep an open mind while we visit the places I have chosen as “Benchmarks” of the many factors, which will affect their satisfaction of lifestyle. I provide a checklist of factors and ask each guest to score the various factors of living for each of the areas we visit. Not surprisingly, each area becomes the NUMBER 1 choice of someone.

I limit the tour to a maximum of 12 people to maximize your personal attention. Please select a tour from the “tour dates” page. Email or call me to assure there is still room on that tour and I will pencil you in for that tour. Then as soon as you have finalized your airline reservations, please complete the reservation form here, reservation form here so that I can lock in your reservaton.

If you are going stay more than the 3 days of the tour, I recommend you schedule them for after the tour so you can take advantage of all you will learn and spend the extra time in the areas you like the best.

One of our MAJOR CONCERNS ABOUT MOVING HERE WAS THE QUALITY, AVAILABILITY, AND COST OF MEDICAL CARE. Now that we have all of these years of experiencing all levels of the system, we would rather face a health or injury situation here than anywhere we know of. The World Health Organization rates the Costa Rica system 35th in the world. THE USA IS 36th. You can check out the facilities and costs at two of the major private Hospitals at: La Cima Hospital and Hospital Biblica

Read more…

Big News! Our friend Arden has just published her first book about moving to Costa Rica. It’s called Unraveling the Mysteries of Moving to Costa Rica and is actually the first of a series called “Mainers in Costa Rica.”

Through our friendship, Paul and I have been able to learn so much from Arden and her husband David that has helped us in our day to day lives — from how to handle our move to Costa Rica to how to navigate the countless decisions to be made along the way in starting our new lives here. And now, you can learn from their experiences (and mistakes) as well.

Her book is divided into three parts. Part One: “The Mainers Move to Costa Rica” follows their family (which included the two of them, Arden’s 80-something-year-old parents and four pets!) as they moved from Maine to Costa Rica. Part Two: “The Ins and Outs of Shipping” covers the issue of what to do with all your “stuff” as you contemplate your own move — whether to ship, what to ship, and how to ship. Then there is the wealth of information and resources contained in Part Three: “More Useful Stuff,” including sample budgets, FAQs, and much more.

I think you will be both informed and entertained as you read this book. Arden is a true story-teller as well as a knowledgeable and clear communicator. To get more information and download your own copy, Click Here!

PANAMA CITY – Bill Dorgan, a former management consultant with a bit of a wandering soul, gave up on his first attempt at retirement in Fort Lauderdale to move to Panama to seek new adventure.

And adventure he found.

“I drove out to Lake Gatun to visit the Embera Indians,” Dorgan recalls with a flicker in his eye. “They picked me up in a dugout canoe and took me across the lake to spend the day in their community, where I danced with bare-chested women. That was an adventure!”

Back in the capital city, Dorgan lives a more urbane lifestyle with his partner Raymond in a spacious and elegantly remodeled 12th-floor apartment overlooking the shimmering glass towers of Panama City’s oceanfront banking district.

Here he has found more modest adventure in daily tasks such as learning to speak Spanish, opening a bank account in a foreign country, making new friends and buying and remodeling an apartment.

Dorgan, like thousands of other North American retirees from his generation, has taken moving south for retirement to new latitudes.

A 2007 survey by New Global Initiatives, in conjunction with the Zogby International, found that more than 3 million U.S. citizens have decided to relocate outside of the United States, and another 17 million were considering making the move. The survey showed that Central America ranked second behind Europe among 55 to 69 year-olds who plan to retire abroad.

That was before the financial crisis hit like a tsunami at the end of the decade, wiping out millions of retirement funds and stock portfolios. Now Central America’s relatively low costs, adjusted property prices and promising economic recovery makes it an even more attractive destination for folks who need to make their retirement dollars stretch further than previously planned.

And within Central America, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama have positioned themselves as the… read more

Private home rentals Costa Rica