The Top Needs For Medical Travel To Be Successful
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The Top Needs For Medical Travel To Succeed
5 things will need to happen before professional medical travel gains enough traction to be a real player in healthcare.
Inspite of the research reports, eco-devo white papers, industry analyses and industry marketing hype, health-related travel/medical tourism is still an early stage industry looking for the best formula for achievement.
In my view, five things will have to happen before clinical tourism and global healthcare referrals come on traction: 1) the advance of a new sustainable business structure, 2) global healthcare IT connectivity and integration, 3) a doctor generated global healthcare referral network, 4) a worldwide regulatory, legal and socioeconomic ecosystem, and 5) patient awareness and acceptance.
The advance of some sort of sustainable business design
Industry players including payors, providers, partners and facilitators continue to be trying to find the by far the most successful method to make money and scale the company. By having an eye towards what actually transpired when Expedia disrupted the travel agency business, participants recognize that margins for travel arrangement services are thin and that there’s high price elasticity for global medical care. Few have realized this wonderful time key that matches the lock that opens the doors to profits. Payors and employers are reluctant to accept the worthiness proposition with out a better method to reduce their risk and demonstrate tangible, meaningful cost savings to their insureds and employees.
Global healthcare IT connectivity and integration
The American national healthcare information architecture is evolving. Eventually, the network might be a portal around the globe all of which will accommodate seemless, secure, confidential transfer of personal health information thus assuring some continuity of care and quality improvement. Similarly, it should take a while for health information systems to evolve in host countries which could talk with non-host systems. Short-term solutions, like personal health records or mobile health applications, might fill the void temporarily.
A doctor generated global healthcare referral network
Most clinical tourism models connect patients to healthcare facilities, bypassing doctors while in the beginning. Docs is certain to get amongst people once the model feels better, and they’ve the time and capacity to make referrals to consultants directly, like they actually do now. Given an upswing of international members, professional clinical societies needs to be more proactive in building global referral networks, as an alternative to seeing them as threats to existing domestic members.
A global regulatory, legal and socioeconomic ecosystem
The barriers to adoption and penetration of medical traveling are numerous and include liability, reimbursement, quality assurance and impediments to continuity of care. As healthcare goes global, same goes with the principles and regulations that facilitate or obstruct its use. Why don’t you consider a new World Trade Organization Treaty on Medical Travel?
Patient awareness and acceptance
In line with probably the most recent polls, 50% of shoppers understand the meaning from the term “medical tourism”, leaving home for care. Social networking buzz and media stories discover the professional medical travel story sexy, particularly given all the noise about escalating healthcare costs and consumers, employers and payors are hungry to find out more. Moving patients from awareness to intention to decision to action, however, will take more hours and employ innovative marketing approaches directed towards granular market segments.
Global professional medical traveling is projected to be a $1B industry by 2012. Whilst the bones are in place, it will take more time to incorporate the flesh. Until then, to quote Karl Mauldin, people won’t leave home without them.
