In our many discussions with Health Insurance Underwriters and Agents, the issue of logistics always comes up. Specifically, they wonder who will be taking care of this for the client For most domestic based health professionals, their experience is on the domestic side. Health Insurance Agents and Third Party Administrators (TPA's) are familiar with the local network of hospitals, clinics and doctors. Their experience with pricing, billing and claims auditing only extends to the domestic network. The systems that are common in the healthcare industry are designed to facilitate domestic healthcare only.In addition, their expertise is limited to domestic healthcare administration. They do not have to deal with issues that can arise in a medical travel environment, such as language, transparency in pricing, travel, companion travel, and other issues that enter into the medical travel equation. They simply have not had the need to, or the opportunity to gain experience in these areas.While we have referenced some of the issues that one may expect when they think about medical travel, we also should reference some of the not-so-obvious caretaking items that a skillful facilitator should undertake. Coordinating any applicable insurance is one Possessing adequate insurance is another (facilitator business insurance). Transmission of health history and documents is a third. The list goes on. For purposes of this article, we will deal with four main items that enhance the destination wellness experience; Pre-travel Planning, Destination Selection, Destination Experience and Patient Experience Management. In addressing these four items, we will focus on the services that truly enhance the destination wellness experience. Therefore, this article is not intended to be a catch-all of patient experience management but rather to provide insight into the attributes of a skillful facilitator.
Pre-Travel Planning, believe it or not, begins with a good internet experience. Americans use the internet as their primary information gathering tool. Therefore, it follows that in order to provide an enhanced pre-travel planning experience, a skillful facilitator will ensure that the travelers have an excellent, meaningful, and informational online experience. Of course, this begins with the facilitator's own website, extends to the websites that the travelers' will use to plan their medical travel, and includes the way in which the information is all integrated. Think of travel portals like Expedia or Travelocity. These internet portals have done to travel preparation what a skillful facilitator should strive to do for medical travel. In other words, medical travelers should have access to EVERY piece of information that they would have access to for purposes of domestic healthcare. Not only should they have access to it, but they should have meaningful access.Meaningful access refers to how information can be used by the traveler. Before the aforementioned travel portals came into existence, planning travel using online tools was a very complex exercise.Users would have to gather the information from various airline websites and then assemble them in a comparison format. Users would also have to gather auxiliary information such as hotel, car rental, interesting places to visit and then somehow integrate all the information in a way so as to make good decisions. Needless to say, one only has to observe the success of the travel portals as an indication of how much the travel planners needed their services.Using a combination of arranging information from online sources in an online environment, together with traditional services that can be accessed via online routes, a facilitator is expected to perform the same magic. One thing to remember before we move on to the next item is that a skillful facilitator strives to maintain the internet environment as much as possible, while making the accessed information as helpful as possible. Our website strives to demonstrate our services in as clear a manner as possible so that our website visitors are clear on what we offer and how we can help their experience.
Destination Selection is a natural offshoot of Pre-Travel Planning. After all, most medical travelers want to select a destination that works best for them. Note that travelers are going to have a variety of factors that they assess, in order of importance to them. Some popular assessment factors are hospital/clinic/doctor experience, quality, price and convenience. Note also that whereas these items are important to the traveler, they are also very important to the plan owner, in a group health plan setting. We could include a million other assessment factors but the important thing to note here is that the potential traveler is making a destination selection during this phase. Therefore, a facilitator's role is to assemble destinations that meet the initial search parameters and present them in a manner that are displayed clearly to the traveler.We have seen a million price comparisons, as an example. A traveler is not always certain that they are seeing an apples-to-apples comparison. Some prices include subsequent hospital stays, some include prosthetics in the example of orthopedics, while some include meals and others do not. We have seen travelers get excited at the prospect of what may seem like a very affordable destination, only to find out when they dig deeper, that the price is exclusive of many necessities that other destination prices included. A skillful facilitator knows how to line up all the prices from various destinations and present them in a straight up comparison table.Once a destination is selected for whatever selection criteria are applied, the experience that a destination offers should match what is advertised. Travelers have built expectations up to this point, and they would sincerely like to realize those expectations. A skillful facilitator knows how to probe in order to ensure that this will be the case. The Medical Tourism Association arranges Fam Tours for interested parties. Fam Tours is a phrase that is short for "Familiarization Tours" and means exactly what one would expect it to mean. These tours are conducted by host destinations in order to familiarize industry participants with their destination. Good facilitators participate in these tours with an eye to how they can use the experience for their clients. We have been on tours where the attendees seem to be on a tourism visit instead of a familiarization tour. These tours should be used to the utmost in order to nail down the minutest details of a traveler's experience.Whereas most of the obvious items like visa requirements are at the top of every facilitator's list of services, a less-obvious item like television access are often ignored. Think about it. When a patient travels for medical purposes, the more you can offer them the "comforts of home", the better their destination experience will be. Most patients would feel more comfortable in an environment where they can watch their favorite TV shows. In many destinations that we have visited the television offerings in the hospitals and in the hotels are very local in nature and visitors have few U.S. options. However, most destinations can easily provide this amenity, if requested to do so. A skillful facilitator would know to make this request.
Once the destination experience has been accounted for, the patient experience management should be a very important facilitator service. Patient Experience refers to the total patient experience, but mostly from a medical aspect. Two areas of patient experience that really move a patient to satisfaction are records transfer and patient recovery. We have seen many instances when a patient gets very discouraged during the record transfer process. Two areas of concern are the timing of the transfer and the privacy of the transfer.Patients get anxious if their records are transferred too early or too late during the process. The former generates questions as to why the records are changing hands so early while the latter generates distrust that the process is dependable. Coupled with those concerns is whether the records are being transferred and stored in a secure environment. A good facilitator makes sure that the patient is very comfortable with the record transfer process and the surrounding privacy and makes sure this comfort occurs long before the actual transfer process takes place. Our telehealth expertise is an attribute that lends tremendous comfort to our patients.A facilitator's work is never done. But, it is very essential to the medical travel industry and is a critical success factor in both individual and group health plan patient experience. Both markets, individual and group, rely on skillful facilitators with experience and who will go the extra mile. At Debson, we realize that our professionalism, enthusiasm and experience bring our patients' health to the top.
