As retailers are turning away from using the phrase “customer service”, hospitals and clinics especially in medical tourism are embracing this phrase wholeheartedly.
Medical providers define customer service according to their own needs. Mostly, as evidenced in hospitals I’ve worked with, “customer service” exists to provide basic hotel concierge or bell desk services – book a car and driver for a trip to the immigration office, find a hotel room, store luggage, order flowers. Read more…
You depend on your hospital, doctor or medical tourism website to draw patients to your service. How well is it doing this?
People are looking for you. 8 out of 10 internet users seek health information online. Medical tourists, caregivers, doctors and nurses want to know more about your facility, your services, and your brand.
Will they find you? If and when they find you, will they stick with you? Read more…
In recent years, a number of forecasts on worldwide gross medical tourism revenue have been put forward by analysts (McKinsey, Deloitte), interested parties (hospitals), trade show promoters and academics.
One of the early predictions of global revenue for medical tourism, $100 billion by 2012, actually included wellness seekers and many others who we today may not strictly classify as medical travelers seeking acute care. Recent reports focus more on numbers of people who might travel (up to 700,000 patients a year) and the savings they would create for the home healthcare system ($20 billion) by taking treatment abroad. Read more…
Selling one’s organs is nothing but controversial in most circles of health care, including medical tourism.
Yet arguments for and against the sale of organs for transplantation are made by distinguished medical leaders. As recently as 2009, the U.S. Congress considered – but failed to pass – a law that would allow payment to certain organ donors. Selling one’s organs remains illegal in the United States and most countries.
Last year, in the U.K., one of the world’s leading transplant surgeons, Dr. Nadey Hakim, and John Harris, an ethicist at the University of Manchester, both encouraged having a debate about legalizing the sale of organs, believing it to be long overdue. Dr. Hakim hopes legalizing organ donor payments Read more…
Are the doctors and nurses you work with in medical tourism following best practices in wearing gloves? Proper and routine glove use enhances patient safety and treatment quality. Keep your eyes open.
When to wear gloves:
• For contact with moist body substances (e.g., blood, wound drainage, oral secretions, feces, urine, and open skin and mucous membranes). Read more…
