Latin American patients turn to Salud Miami for help.

Eva Barac, a homemaker from Lima, Peru, had been in severe pain for more than a year. Her local doctor had recommended surgery, but she had postponed a decision. By then, the pain had spread to her knees and the once-active woman was forced to walk with a cane. One day, she heard about a news report in El Comercio, lauding a new orthopedic treatment pioneered by a physician in Miami.

And so it came to pass that Mrs. Barac flew to Miami for hip replacement surgery, and became one of more than 500 Latin American patients helped by the Miami Medical Alliance over the past year.

"I had the operation May 9 and then had therapy for several weeks," said Mrs. Barac, now back in Lima. "Everything went very well, and I feel great."

It's a typical success story for Miami Medical Alliance. Since the launch of the program in March 1999, the organization's mission has broadened from one of creating an awareness that Miami is a destination of medical excellence to that of assisting patients get the help they need, one-on-one.

"As we go into our third year of operation, we are reaching the next level, focusing on helping tertiary patients who are in the more advanced stages of cancer or cardiac problems, or who require the more innovative, more complicated surgeries," says Victoria Brewer-Anderson, executive director.

The alliance, also known as Salud Miami (Spanish) and Saude Miami (Portuguese), is a consortium of nine major hospitals that serve international patients. The alliance partners with hotels, airlines, travel agents and the medical community to offer first-class medical care.

Increasingly, the Internet plays a key role. Salud Miami's web site now offers content updated weekly, reporting on the latest advances in health care, connecting users to participating hospitals, and offering links to hotel and travel partners. It's a popular web site, and Brewer-Anderson's first contact is often from a patient writing e-mail to Salud Miami. Even the patients' medical records, required for pre-evaluation purposes, now come by e-mail (see photo).

Many patients hear about Salud Miami through their local news media. More than eight groups of Latin American health and lifestyle journalists have come to tour the participating hospitals under Brewer-Anderson's direction. The ensuing news coverage brings these patients for consultations in several medical specialties, including the following:

Aventura Hospital and Medical Center: A patient with a back injury was treated with a new technique for disc replacement. The doctor is one of only 10 in the United States performing this surgery.

Baptist Hospital of Miami: Suffering from cancer, a Peruvian man requested advanced treatment for liver cancer.

Cedars Medical Center: This is where Eva Barac came for hip replacement surgery pioneered by Dr. Roland Pritchard.

Mercy Hospital: A Venezuelan maternity patient at risk for premature birth requested an evaluation utilizing a new detection method.

Miami Children's Hospital: An Ecuadorian mother brought her 10-month-old daughter suffering from arrhythmia for further tests.

Miami Heart Institute and Medical Center: The hospital, site of a protocol medical study on PTMR, a procedure using lasers to improve circulation in the heart, received requests for participation.

Mount Sinai Medical Center: Salud Miami assisted a remotely located Argentine farmwoman suffering from ovarian cancer and accessible only by wireless phone to reach doctors for follow-up.

South Miami Hospital: A Brazilian man who had already been treated for prostate cancer sought advanced therapies.

The University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center: Electronic files are transferred regularly for protocols available in bone marrow transplants and cases of advanced leukemia.