Medical Tourism Training Courses
Do you have the training and skills you need to succeed in in the health and wellness tourism business?
Find Medical Tourism Training Courses You Need to Ensure Your Success
In Person, Master Classes, Private Coaching & Strategy Consultations, Staff Training, Hands-on Practicums, and Webinars
Whatever your requirements for medical tourism skills training and professional development, we are your best resource.
Our experts are required to have more than 15 years of practical subject matter expertise beyond their formal academic studies. Most people involved in medical tourism and many of the certifiers have only been a part of the industry since 2007 or later. Among our experts are more than 50 healthcare business improvement textbook titles that have been commercially published on a wide variety of topics to prepare you for medical tourism business.
Tell us what you want to learn, the format you prefer (in person, live workshops, seminars, online training, classroom, onsite staff training, or webinar) and we will tell you if we have it available, or if we can custom tailor a program to meet your needs. Let us know your budget, time considerations, and available dates you want to set up your course and we can often come up with a solution to meet your needs. If your needs exceed your budget, we can offer some low cost alternatives and self-study materials to get you started.
Sign up for our newsletter to learn about upcoming medical tourism training courses you may be able to attend via the Internet for a lower cost that avoids travel and expensive fees for conference attendance when all you want is training.
Hospitals & Health Facilities
You need more than doctors with extra time on their hands and an empty operating theater to succeed in medical tourism. Avoid being reduced to a commodity seller competing solely on price.
Whether your business is a single hospital or a corporate chain of private hospitals and clinics, we:
- Design your medical tourism service line
- Develop your international patient department workflows, policies, procedures, and staff training and development
- Assist your marketing team with international campaigns for foreign patients
- Train your team leaders in how to use social media marketing across different cultures who engage differently throughout the world
- Teach you how to contract with referral agencies
- Teach you how to contract with insurance plans throughout the world
- Teach you how to construct a medical tourism business strategy
- Prepare your facility for accreditation surveys and reaccreditation
- Help you to understand the 3rd party payer and insurer requirements so you'll be ready to contract with them for international patient services.
- Choose, install and maximize a medical tourism information systems platform to coordinate care, travel, payment, and medical records exchange all in one.
Doctors and Dentists
"Above all else, do no harm". Let's keep your business and your patient safe as you enter this new realm of elective healthcare for international patients
Doctors, dentists and therapists are eager to open their practice to international patients. It's exciting. It exposes you to new clinical challenges to solve, and ameliorate pain, disability and mitigate disease progression. All of these things are possible with medical tourism, but not just because you have a license to practice. We teach you how to prepare and market your services to international patients and fill in the gaps left open from your post-graduate training that never covered skills such as:
- Creating your professional brand, commercial image, targeted messages and dictinctive reputation as an international authority in your specialty
- How to plan and execute marketing strategies for your professional services and private clinic
- Packaging your professional services with complementary services to create destination experience packages that go beyond a consultation appointment and a hospital admission
- How to use social media as a means to connect and engage with prospects and convert them to patients who buy what you sell
- Pricing for medical tourism services (the costs are higher to deliver the care than the cost to treat local patients) so you don't accidentally overlook incremental costs that you will have to absorb if you miss them
- How to choose and use a medical tourism electronic health records system that is compliant with all regulations and laws for international transfer of sensitive private health information
- How to create the contracts and consent forms you'll need to treat patients, collect fees, and resolve any disputes with patients, suppliers, hotels, destination managers, referral agencies, and others
- Policies and procedures, workflows, and safety net strategies to streamline process and avoid costly and risky errors, oversights and mistakes
- How to prepare for accreditation surveys for your private clinic
- Travel planning for the medical tourism patient - addressing special needs and avoiding unnecessary medical and other risks
Hotels and Resorts
It doesn't matter whether you have an AirBnB property or a Ritz Carlton Resort - Medical Tourism is different and requires preparation and planning. You need more than any empty hotel room or a handicap access room to meet these special guests' needs.
Hotels, spas, resorts and guest houses all want to participate in medical tourism opportunities when visitors arrive and are not confined to a hospital or clinic overnight. You'll benefit from our decades of experience with hospitality services, front and back of the house operations, marketing techniques and medical tourism special needs preparations to be ready to partner with hospitals clinics, doctors and dentists. Our experts will:
- Teach your Executive Chef about special needs for food and beverage readiness
- Teach your Engineering Staff and Facilities Management team about special needs for wall, floor, window coverings, bed linens
- Teach your Housekeeping Manager about managing special needs patients and anti-allergenic bath and personal care amenities that may be handy to have available when the need arises
- Teach your security team about the types of medical tourism risks that can happen in a hotel and how to prepare for and mitigate them
- Teach your Concierge about special needs when recommending food and beverage and activity programs, tours, and standing and walking tolerance to make guests feel more at ease
- Teach your Van and Limousine Drivers how to assist medical tourism patients with mobility and other physical challenges to ensure smooth transitions from airport to car and hospital to care
- Teach your Executive Team how to create partnering strategies and execute contracts with healthcare facilities and professionals, tourism referral partners
- Teach the Front of the House Staff what to consider and how to decide on room assignments based on special needs, and how to notate folios in the event of house-wide emergencies and set up systems so that security and management teams are aware of medical tourism patients whose needs may not be outwardly apparent
- Teach the Marketing Staff how to build medical tourism experience packages based on medical requirements, wellness interests, recuperation, and relaxation
- Review environmental and sustainability techniques that are involved in the medical tourism sector and help you adapt and improve them
Referral Agencies
Travel agents, tour operators, medical tourism facilitators, and destination management companies
Of the many referral partners and agencies most are regulated professions except for the medical tourism facilitator. The reason: It is a new role.
Competency as a medical tourism referral agency is not easy to come by. Low volumes It takes a combination of training that is rarely taught at the college, university or vocational-technical education center in a set curriculum. A new entrant rarely knows which courses to pick to round out their preparation for the job knowledge required.
Numerous opportunistic certifiers have been popping up all over the world selling high-priced 2-day to 5-day workshops and seminars that gloss over complicated topics and sell you permission to display their trademarked logo as an artificial badge of competency. Often, the badges are not recognized, trusted or meaningful to potential clients or suppliers. It simply results in the certifiers' logos being placed in a position of prominence in your marketing materials at great cost to you. When you fail to pay renewals, your certification disappears until you write another check.
Competent health travel coordinators take pride in their work and continue to improve and expand their knowledge and skills. They maintain vigilance to remain steps ahead of problems through preparation for the unexpected and the complicated itinerary of the medical tourism client. They do whatever it takes to mitigate the risk of potential perils for their clients and their own businesses. We teach our students and working professionals to be prepared and ready to make medical tourism easier. We don't charge for badges or issue certifications. Instead, we train you how to succeed. Our experts will help you to:
- Understand the medical tourism business, compensation models and services you are expected to provide.
- Know how to inspect health and hospitality facilities; what to look for, how to decide if they are right for your client and provide you with detailed checklists
- Execute contracts with clients, hospitals, healthcare professionals, hotels, airlines, destination management firms to set expectations for your services
- Enforce your payment terms to get paid under the service fee model and the commission model, and how to avoid being taken advantage of
- Market and advertise medical tourism on a website, on social media channels, and in person through presentations and storytelling
- Set prices for packages that won't leave you exposed or short on covering your costs and margin
- Develop internal policies and procedures, workflows and safety nets for when things go wrong
- Guide clients through the investigation of any third-party payer (insurers, employers, etc.,) benefits that might defray out of pocket costs of their medical tourism services
- Create destination adventures and experiences your clients will love and recommend on social media feedback and to their friends and family - and generate repeat and referral business
- Arrange and coordinate complicated medical and surgical cases (cancer care, complicated surgeries, experimental treatments and clinical trials, transplants, etc.)
- Help plan simple, straightforward outpatient and day-surgery cases that are oriented toward more vacation activities than medical procedures
- Coordinate follow up care
- Measure clinical outcomes and client satisfaction using industry-accepted checklists and surveys
- Maintain strict compliance for international and interstate transfer of medical records handling privacy and security
- Learn anatomy (structure), physiology (function), medical terminology, medical travel health risks and clinical indicators that when present make you think twice whether you can and should ethically accept the case or decline the business opportunity or defer or collaborate with someone with more training and experience.
Consumer Groups
Get the best possible outcome, good value and stay safe
Consumers are curious about medical tourism. They cite many reasons that they might consider the possibility but are concerned about what to believe from all that they read and hear in the media, on blogs and in confusing advertising campaigns by providers. Our experts present from first-hand patient experiences and insights gathered from site inspections at health and wellness tourism destinations on 6 continents and working in the industry day in and day out to:
- Explain the six most popular reasons why people try medical tourism
- Explain why medical tourism cases sometimes appear less expensive, but aren't always when examined in context
- Explain what to look for in a provider, what accreditation really represents so that they have realistic expectations of the service, quality and safety
- Explain how to accurately gauge price comparisons by taking into account more than just the cost of the procedure
- Explain how to find "facilitators" and referral agencies to help them; including what questions to ask and how to critically evaluate the answers they get
- Explain how to approach the consumers' personal physicians and open the discussion and enlist their support for traveling for surgery, clinical trials or other healthcare services from providers outside their doctor's preferred referral group
- Explain how to approach plan administrators from their employee benefits program and health insurers to find out of any benefits coverage is available for the health and wellness services they need
- Explain what to expect in service differences and reactions to patient engagement and self-determination, doctor-patient relationships, and cultural or language challenges
- Explain how to tie together the follow up care they will need when they return back home to have a seamless treatment experience and recuperation
- Explain the options available if complications arise and how to initiate dispute resolution if something goes wrong, or what to do if they experience unexpected events (terrorist attacks, natural disasters, etc.) while traveling for care.
Insurers & Employers
We bring the know-how to help third-party payers to understand value, safety, and service in medical travel options.
Our experts have decades of experience with third-party payers working in provider contracting, network development, case management, claims, benefits consulting and member services. They've worked at the executive level of several large health insurers and TPA. As a result, they can relate with the payers' and employers' fiduciary and regulatory concerns and explain medical tourism in the context this framework. Our medical tourism training courses for insurers and employers will help payers to:
- Understand the medical tourism business, compensation models and services you are expected to provide.
- Design and implement a domestic and/or medical tourism benefit program
- Learn how to undertake deep inspections of health and hospitality facilities; what to look for, how to decide if they are right for your plan and provide you with detailed checklists
- Understand international hospital accreditation schemes, and associated representations and limitations
- Execute contracts with hospitals, healthcare professionals, hotels, airlines, destination management firms to set expectations for rates and services
- Circumvent false claims issues that can arise from poor documentation, fraud and abuse, and misunderstandings of billing and administrative protocols
- Negotiate bundled rates for services and outlier situations
- Develop internal policies and procedures, workflows and routines for health plan staff and coordinators
- Understand professional credentialing and privileging systems outside the USA so that any gaps can be reconciled without surprises.
- Arrange and coordinate complicated medical and surgical cases (cancer care, complicated surgeries, experimental treatments and clinical trials, transplants, etc.) and tie together all points within the episode of care
- Coordinate follow up care and carve out services for post-travel evaluation and management services payment
- Implement clinical outcomes and client satisfaction measurement at foreign destinations using industry-accepted standard checklists and surveys
- Maintain strict compliance for international and interstate transfer of medical records handling privacy and security
- Understand what's involved in foreign transaction, provider fee settlements, dispute resolution, and professional liability /indemnification issues
- Understand underwriting and actuarial trends in utilization of health travel options, claims costs, population health management and other risks associated with third-party plan financial risks
- Understand fiduciary risk exposures under ERISA with regard to employee's claims of breach of contract, bad faith, and intentional or negligent misrepresentation when the foreign providers are viewed as or proven to be substandard
- Understand the privity of contract issues that could arise when contracting for health services through a medical tourism facilitator or destination cluster
- Estimate time, costs and understand the data requirements to analyze population health and past utilization to complete a feasibility study to see if medical tourism is a viable option for your plan
Public Officials
We bring the strategies, best practices and framework insights for government authorities interested in economic development through health and wellness tourism business.
Our trainers are experience in framework development for medical tourism regulations, market entry strategy and destination branding. We build capacity for government authorities and public officials concerned with public health, tourism, economic development, educational curriculum, foreign affairs and immigration, quality and safety, data management, taxation, urban and regional planning, sustainability, marketing and advertising, and destination experience strategies. Our medical tourism training courses for government officials will help them to:
- Understand the medical tourism business, compensation models and services they will offer at their location
- Design and implement a domestic and/or medical tourism benefit program
- Learn how to formulate official badging for approved providers of health and hospitality; tourism services, consumer affairs, and how to set standards of operation and performance and provide you with detailed checklists
- Understand international hospital accreditation schemes, and associated representations and limitations
- Promulgate framework laws and regulations that regulate the business of medical tourism for hospitals, healthcare professionals, hotels, airlines, destination management firms institutionalize rates and services and commercial conduct.
- Develop internal policies and procedures, workflows and routines for public office staff and coordinators to regulate the commercialization of health and wellness tourism
- Implement clinical outcomes and client satisfaction measurement using industry-accepted standard checklists and surveys
- Promulgate compliance standards and regulations for international transfer of medical records handling privacy and security
- Examine long-stay and 2nd residence programs that have successfully been implemented in other countries
- Understand the set up and complexities associated with government-sponsored medical tourism clusters and PPPs and examine why many have failed to produce expected results
- Understand what is involved in dispute resolution and how the public sector can play a role to continuously improve and settle disputes without litigation and bad publicity.
- Institutionalize the role of the professional medical tourism facilitator as a regulated profession with specific competencies and registration to avoid parallel economy growth and avoidance of tax payments and spurious alternative certifications that cost money and are unrecognized in the market
- Estimate time, costs and understand the requirements to build a viable medical tourism product at the destination