Run by one person,
from Medellin
Not a call center. Not a marketing agency with a stock photo of a hospital. Someone who lives eight thousand feet closer to the hospitals than the sites you have been reading.
I'm Andy. I run Scout Theory LLC, a US-registered company, and I live in Medellin, Colombia. This site is the orthopedic piece of a larger research project on what medical care actually costs when you pay for it yourself.
Why joint replacement specifically
Because the gap is the widest and the audience is the most poorly served. A total knee can be billed at $45,000 by an American hospital, sold for $17,679 as a published cash bundle by a surgical center in Oklahoma, and performed in Colombia for a third of that. Three prices, same operation, and almost nobody facing the decision gets to see all three.
Meanwhile, the people making the decision are typically in their sixties, have already been through a denial or a waiting list, and are trying to research an unfamiliar country using sites that are transparently selling something. That is a bad information environment, and it is fixable.
What being here actually buys you
A US-based facilitator can email a hospital. I can walk into the international patient office and ask what happens if a patient develops an infection on day nine, in Spanish, and watch how long it takes them to answer. I can look at whether the recovery apartment someone is recommending actually has a working elevator. I can tell the difference between a hospital that has an international program and one that has a brochure about having an international program.
That is the entire moat, and it is not replicable from Florida.
What I am not
I am not a doctor, a nurse, or any kind of licensed medical professional. Nothing on this site is medical advice, a diagnosis, or a treatment recommendation. I cannot tell you whether you need surgery, which implant is right for you, or whether you are a candidate. Those are questions for a surgeon who has reviewed your imaging.
What I can do is publish accurate cost research, explain how to verify credentials yourself, and tell you plainly when the honest answer is that you should have your surgery at home.
On how this makes money. This is a referral business. If a clinic relationship results in a booking, there may be a referral fee involved. You should assume that is true of every medical travel site you read, including the ones that never mention it. What it does not change: the price ranges here come from public sources, I have no reason to steer you toward a more expensive procedure than you need, and I would rather tell you to stay home than have you go badly.
The rest of the network
Joint Replacements is one vertical. The hub is ColombiaMedical.co, which covers Colombian medical travel broadly. SafeMedicalTravel.co handles the safety, crime, and accreditation data. MedicalCosts.co covers US cash-pay pricing across procedures. There are procedure-specific sites for dental, LASIK, fertility, and others.
Reach me
WhatsApp is the fastest way — it is how business communication actually works in Colombia, and I am in the same timezone as most of the US. +1 (614) 607-1230. Email works too: andy@colombiamedical.co.
Get a real number for your joint.
Tell us the joint, the side, and your timeline. We come back with typical 2026 ranges from Medellin and Bogota — not a sales pitch, and not a quote until a surgeon has seen your imaging.
One vertical of a larger research project
Joint Replacements is the orthopedic arm of a Colombia-focused medical travel network. Same standards, same person behind it, different procedure.