VICTOR Li, former president of the East-West Center, now engages in international business including the introduction of "Sesame Street" to Chinese and German TV. He sidelines as board chairman of the Queen's International Corp., formed a few years ago to help the Queen's Medical Center market internationally. Promoting Hawaii
as a health-care centerQueen's, most of Hawaii's other health providers, the UH College of Business Administration, the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism and the Oahu Economic Development Board all are falling in line with Governor Cayetano's desire to make international health care an add-on to Hawaii's economy.
We have superb medical talent in Hawaii. We are among the healthiest places in the world. We are a friendly, attractive place to spend a recuperation. And we may have extra beds if trends to reduced hospitalization continue.
Li differs on one point from some of the other marketers. He would expand our goal of identifying Hawaii as "a world-class healthcare destination" to that of "a world-class wellness destination" or even "wellness center."
Using the latter definition, he thinks 10 to 20 percent of visitor travel to Hawaii could be "wellness travel." That includes such existing successes as the Honolulu Marathon, which brings 20,000 wellness searchers here from Japan every December.
Tourism is an $11 billion industry today. Our problem is we have no single other industry to match its potential as we strive to bring in more dollars and create more jobs and tax revenues. Wellness could be a significant add-on and talking point.
Li joins the other international health destination advocates in believing the image we create should have two sides to it. On one hand we attract more people here for health care with a particular focus on wealthy people from Asia who can find us culturally more compatible than, say, Mayo Clinic's Rochester, Minn., base.
On the other hand, we spread awareness of our know-how to the point that more outsiders, Asians in particular, want to hire our brains and services, learn our management systems and hire our medical devices.
Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are targets.
Healthcare Association, an umbrella for most of Hawaii's health providers, has an English-language promotional brochure that enumerates our world-class centers of excellence in cardiac, cancer, orthopedics, trauma, obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, neuroscience, chemical dependency, urology, spinal cord injury, kidney dialysis, organ transplantation, diabetes and industrial medicine.
A $400,000 federal grant to help our consortium promote Hawaii as a Pacific Rim center has recently been won for administration by CIBER, the Center for International Business and Research at UH-Manoa.
THERE'S a touchy edge here somewhere. Could all this new foreign demand diminish attention to our own citizens who want health care, even crowd them out of beds? Let's prefer to believe the free market will take care of that.
Depending on how you count, health care already is our second largest industry at $3.5-4 billion a year. That's more than military spending brings in. But the military dollars are outside dollars.
Aside from Medicare and Medicaid most of the health-care dollars are local dollars recirculating. Bringing in more outside dollars is the goal of Governor Cayetano and the reason we want to be known as a world-class health or wellness center.