Tempe Doctor’s Book Shows Best in Mexican Medical Care

Top physicians, facilities in nation detailed in guide

Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Oct. 3, 2004 12:00 AM

MEXICO CITY – Four years ago, two Tempe doctors set out to write a health guide aimed at travelers in Mexico. What they found surprised them.

There were lots of rural, badly equipped clinics, of course. But they also found world-class hospitals, with luxury rooms that put American hospitals to shame. They found cutting-edge equipment like the radiosurgery Gamma Knife and linear accelerators, doctors trained in the best schools, and a personal touch that is hard to find in today’s American medical system.

“I was pleasantly surprised,” said co-author Robert H. Page of the Tempe Primary Care clinic. “They have some incredible hospitals. They’re doing great work there.” The problem is finding these hospitals, since most of them are far from the big tourist centers where Americans go. So Page and his son Curtis, who is also a doctor, began interviewing and photographing hundreds of doctors, visiting dozens of clinics and hospitals, and poring over resumes and medical records to find the best of Mexico’s medical care.

Page’s other son, Robert R., a former economic researcher in Argentina, served as the team’s scout, lining up interviews and collecting data from the Mexican government. All three Pages speak Spanish.

Their book, The Mexico Health and Safety Travel Guide, is 465 pages, with more than 180 English-speaking doctors, including mug shots, and 50 hospitals ranked on a 1-to-5 quality scale. There are 100 maps, a guide to symptoms, a medical glossary, and a list of medicines with their Mexican equivalents.

The book came out in May and has sold 3,500 copies, Robert R. said. Now the three are planning a series of regional guides, beginning with Canc�n and the Yucatan Peninsula.

Robert H. said he got the idea for the book years ago after watching an American tourist die in a traffic accident near Puerto Vallarta. He accompanied the body to the morgue, where a half-dozen other American bodies were stranded because of embassy red tape.

“I came out of that thinking, ‘God, what happens to Americans when they travel?’” he said. “There are excellent doctors down there, and Americans don’t know where to find them.” The book divides Mexico into regions. In an emergency, travelers in those areas should get transferred to a handful of "referral cities" as soon as they can, it says. Visitors in Chiapas should head to Villahermosa, for example, and tourists in Acapulco should go to Mexico City. “The book also warns of tourist destinations where good medical care is hard to find, most of them coastal towns like Puerto Escondido, Manzanillo and Guaymas. Veracruz and Puerto Vallarta have good hospitals, the book says. Health care in Canc�n is often corrupt, with hotels getting kickbacks from doctors and ambulance drivers they contact to handle their guests, the book says. Mazatl�n hotels have a similar system.

“I’m not too thrilled with the hospitals in tourist areas,” Curtis said.

In many of the best hospitals, medical care is one-third to one-fifth the cost in the United States, the elder Page said. Weight-loss surgery that costs $35,000 in the United States can be done by an expert surgeon in Monterrey for $10,000, he said.

Page said he recently sent one of his uninsured patients for prostate surgery in Hermosillo, and the bill was $1,100 for an operation that would have cost $13,000 in the United States.

The Pages also launched a Web site, www.medtogo.com, to answer medical questions.

The book was intended for travelers and expatriates, but it is attracting the attention of “medical tourists” who are seeking cheap places to get weight-loss operations, face lifts and other surgeries their insurance won’t cover, the authors said.” All the questions we get online are aimed at that,” Curtis said.

Though the book does not list plastic surgeons, the doctors and hospitals it does list can refer patients to them.

The new regional guides will be smaller, about 200 pages each, and focus on health concerns specific to those areas. The Yucatan guide, for example, will list hospitals that have pressure chambers to treat people who get decompression sickness while scuba diving in the Caribbean.

Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com.