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The 5 Top Needs For Medical Tourism To Be Successful

5 things will likely need to happen before healthcare traveling gains enough traction being a real player in healthcare.

Regardless of the odd research reports, eco-devo white papers, industry analyses and industry marketing hype, medical travel/medical tourism is still an early stage industry trying to find the right formula for achievement.

In my view, five things will likely need to happen before healthcare tourism and global healthcare referrals come on traction: 1) the coming of a sustainable business model, 2) global healthcare IT connectivity and integration, 3) your physician generated global healthcare referral network, 4) a worldwide regulatory, legal and socioeconomic ecosystem, and 5) patient awareness and acceptance.

The creation of some sort of sustainable business design

Industry players including payors, providers, partners and facilitators are still trying to find the essentially the most successful approach to generate income and scale the work. By having an eye towards what happened when Expedia disrupted the travel agency business, participants be aware that margins for travel arrangement services are thin understanding that there is high price elasticity for global health related care. Few have found the magic key that will fit the lock that opens the doors to profits. Payors and employers are not wanting to accept the worthiness proposition with no better method to reduce their risk and demonstrate tangible, meaningful financial savings with their insureds and employees.

Global healthcare IT connectivity and integration

The Us national healthcare information architecture is evolving. Eventually, the network is a portal to the world and definitely will accommodate seemless, secure, confidential transfer of private health information thus assuring some continuity of care and quality improvement. Similarly, it will take some time for health information systems to evolve in host countries that will speak with non-host systems. Temporary solutions, like personal health records or mobile health applications, might fill the void temporarily.

A health care provider generated global healthcare referral network

Most health-related tourism models connect patients to healthcare facilities, bypassing doctors from the beginning. Docs can get in the game if the model feels better, and they have the time and capability to make referrals to consultants directly, like they generally do now. Given an upswing of international members, professional health-related societies should be more proactive in building global referral networks, in preference to seeing them as threats to existing domestic members.

An international regulatory, legal and socioeconomic ecosystem

The barriers to adoption and penetration of professional medical travel are many and will include liability, reimbursement, quality assurance and impediments to continuity of care. As healthcare goes global, so will the principles and regulations that facilitate or obstruct its use. What about some sort of World Trade Organization Treaty on Health-related Travel?

Patient awareness and acceptance

Based on one of the most recent polls, 50% of consumers understand the significance of the term “medical tourism”, leaving home for care. Social networking buzz and media stories get the professional medical travel story sexy, particularly given each of 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 require added time and employ innovative marketing approaches directed towards granular market segments.

Global clinical traveling is projected as being a $1B industry by 2012. Although bones are typically in place, it will take more time to add the flesh. For now, to quote Karl Mauldin, people won’t leave the house without them.

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