Beleaguered by the soaring costs of employee health-care coverage, a growing number of U.S. companies, including at least two in Washington, are looking closely at a radical solution: sending their workers overseas, where operations cost a small fraction of what they cost in the United States.

Carol Blankenship, a benefits consultant at Acordia Northwest Inc., a Seattle-based insurance brokerage firm, says that two corporate clients, including one in Yakima, have inquired about the possibility of sending workers to Mexico and the Philippines for lower cost health care.

And rumors are swirling that the Boeing Co. is exploring the option of offering offshore surgery to its workers in an effort to cut annual health-care costs that reached $1.74 billion last year. Since the aerospace giant is self-insured, any savings in its medical costs would directly affect its bottom line. However, Boeing spokesman Tim Neale says he’s unaware of any such prospective change in company health-care offerings.

If Boeing does choose to offer offshore medical procedures, the company wouldn’t be the first. A North Carolina company sent one of its employees to India this summer to undergo surgery on a leaky heart valve. The operation cost $20,000 up to $116,000 less than it would have cost in the United States.

If offshore medical care grows in popularity, it could provide a major shock to the nation’s health care system. “What happens when real market forces are unleashed on health care?” asks Matt Eyring, managing director at Innosight Space Ventures. That company is an early stage venture capital firm launched by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor who has made a name for himself studying the disruptive impacts of innovation. Christensen sees the trend toward what might be called “corporate medical tourism” as potentially launching massive changes in America’s health-care environment.

Innosight is already considering investments in ventures such as IndUShealth, a startup firm in Raleigh, N.C., that helps corporations wanting to offer their employees offshore medical services. According to its president, Tom Keesling, IndUShealth is in discussions with a pair of American states and 14 individual companies about providing such health services. One of those companies is Detroit-based General Motors Corp., the world’s largest auto manufacturer. GM contends that its health care costs put it at a major disadvantage against Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. and other foreign auto companies whose workers are covered by national health care plans.

Participating companies would likely provide their employees with the option to continue receiving health care from U.S. providers. But they would offer various incentives, including travel expenses and perhaps as much as $10,000 in cash, to make the overseas option more attractive. Offshore medical treatments would be undertaken at high-quality hospitals that have been certified by the same standards organizations that certify American hospitals.

The idea is to send patients overseas only for procedures in which a foreign hospital has a proven record of success and the potential savings are large. “You are not going to go for something that’s extremely risky,” says Eyring. Cell phones and video conferencing can be used to keep patients overseas in constant touch with their families. “We are actually able to address concerns of the family [in the United States] faster than if you had a family member in a Seattle hospital,” says IndUShealth’s Keesling.

A company can make use of offshore medical services in a variety of ways. One approach is for a self-insured employer to ask its existing third-party administrator to make the foreign arrangements. United Group Programs Inc., a third-party health care administrator in Boca Raton, Fla. – which counts car company DaimlerChrysler Corp. among its clients – recently added Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, to its preferred-provider network.