Are experiences of international patients explored as well as they could be?

For some years we’ve been gathering feedback from international patients through our Medical Tourism Survey, to help medical tourism destinations, clusters and individual hospitals and clinics to assess how well they are delivering services. Our new Medical Travel Insight now allows our clients benchmark AND improve the service they deliver to international patients.

Most hospitals and clinics make some effort to measure patient satisfaction. There may be a paper-based survey that gets sent to patients following discharge. Perhaps even an online survey. Or, in some healthcare facilities, patients may be given an iPad to submit their views on the patient experience before they leave the hospital.

But are the experiences of international patients explored as well as they could be?

Ask yourself these questions:

  • How well do you understand your international patients?
  • What is their view of coming for treatment in your country’s hospitals and clinics before, during and, importantly, after they have come for treatment?
  • What do you learn from what they have to say?
  • What improvements do you make based on their experience?
  • How do you compare to other medical tourism providers and destinations?

For some years, we’ve been exploring the experiences of international patients through our Medical Tourism Survey. The survey gathers information on:

  • Age, sex and location of the patient
  • Healthcare facility used
    Countries considered for treatment
  • Why they chose a country for treatment
    What treatment they travelled for
  • Who paid for the treatment
    What they spent on treatment, and on the trip as a whole
  • How much they saved
  • Their level of satisfaction with the patient experience, and why they were satisfied or dissatisfied
  • Their post treatment experience and communication
    Whether they would do it again
  • Whether they would recommend medical travel to a friend

We’ve now taken our approach a stage further to enable medical tourism destinations, clusters and individual hospitals and clinics to assess how well they are delivering services to international patients, benchmark what they do AND identify areas for improvement.

Providing insight into the medical tourism experience

We’ve introduced Medical Travel Insight to help our clients benchmark and improve the service they deliver to international patients.

We use our online survey tool to gather feedback from patients who have come to you for treatment. We gather data on why they travelled, why they chose your destination, what they spent, who funded the treatment, what they liked and what they didn’t like, their satisfaction with pre and post treatment care and communication, and their willingness to recommend the experience to friends. We then deliver a comprehensive report and recommendations for improvement.

The benefits are substantial. Medical Travel Insight enables you to:

  • Gain a better understanding of the patient experience.
  • Benchmark against other providers and destinations.
  • Identify improvements in communication and services.
  • Increase patient to patient referral.
  • Grow your international patient business.

If you want to know more (and how much it costs!), download the overview or drop me an email at IMTJ.

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As Editor in Chief of International Medical Travel Journal (IMTJ) and a Healthcare Consultant for LaingBuisson, Keith Pollard is one of Europe’s leading experts on private healthcare, medical tourism and cross border healthcare, providing consultancy and research services, and attending and contributing to major conferences across the world on the subject. He has been involved in private healthcare, medical travel and cross border healthcare since the 1990s. His career has embraced the management of private hospitals in the UK, research and feasibility studies for healthcare ventures, the marketing and business development aspects of healthcare and medical travel and publishing, research and consultancy on cross border healthcare.