Medical Tourism is a $100+ Billion USD industry and growing, but for many stakeholders their own medical travel business growth has yet to reach its true potential. Marketing efforts aren’t getting the results desired, business development in a global market with different business cultures and languages is difficult and while some healthcare providers are growing and having their best year ever, other have remained static and nothing they do is moving the needle.
Growth in medical travel requires an understanding of the market dynamics and how to leverage the right strategies to get clients to your destination. Simply put, growth begins when you know how to get clients to see you and recognize your value, but it’s not easy to get them to “see you.” With thousands of choices globally both patients and B2B referral organizations don’t have a filter to identify the best global provider partners. The Global Provider Network, launched by Global Healthcare Resources is going to solve that problem and fill this huge gap in the industry. To Learn more about the Global Provider Network go here.
Challenges inhibiting Growth in Medical Travel
Referral organizations, physicians and healthcare organizations, all have their own challenges in growing their international patient business.
Each of these players occupies a unique position in the medical travel ecosystem and are interconnected in driving growth. When each of these industry stakeholders have barriers to growing or accessing the industry, a huge traffic jam occurs that actually inhibits business from occurring.
For buyers or referral organizations, some of these challenges include:
- Limited time and resources to establish and expand their provider network
- Limited knowledge or purchasing power to negotiate the best discounts or commissions
- Long wait times to secure a contract with healthcare providers
- Lack of knowledge in identifying the right healthcare providers, who provide top-quality services and are committed to excellent patient experience and global best practices.
- Difficulty in accessing user-friendly technology and payment models that make transactions simple and accessible.
For healthcare organizations, including hospitals, clinics, and healthcare groups, common challenges limiting growth include:
- Lack of brand awareness to penetrate international markets. Simply put, playing small.
- Poor access to technology of payment platforms that make patient referrals easy
- Inadequate investments in and poor budgeting for marketing and business developments
- Poor access to and communication with referral organizations
- Providers taking a long time to sign contracts for referrals
- Lack of strong relationships with referring organizations
- Poor understanding of discounts and commissions required by referral organizations.
For physicians and healthcare teams, common challenges include:
- Lack of brand awareness to penetrate international markets.
- Physicians do not market themselves but waiting on hospitals to do so.
- Poor access to technology of payment platforms that make patient referrals easy
- Inadequate investments in and poor budgeting for marketing and business developments
- Poor access to and communication with referral organizations
- Providers taking a long time to sign contracts for referrals
- Lack of strong relationships with referring organizations
- Poor understanding of discounts and commissions required by referral organizations.
The culminative effect of these complex challenges is a dam on a river or lake preventing the water from flowing out.
GPN: Solving the Problem of Access
Global Healthcare Resources, the world’s leading authority in the business of health, has launched the Global Provider Network (GPN), to drive the needed growth in the medical tourism market by solving the problem of access.
The Global Provider Network is a turnkey program that provides referral organizations with instant access to healthcare providers with pre-negotiated discounts and commissions, while also providing healthcare providers access to a global network of referral organizations, speeding up business relationships and patient volumes at mass scale.
The Global Provider Network focuses on the 3 “P” Priorities, aimed at increasing Partnerships, Patients, and Profitability through tested solutions that address these multiple challenges.
How will GPN Solve these Problems?
Global Provider Network takes a collaborative approach to solving these challenges, leveraging data, technology, and medical tourism training to achieve the desired results. The GPN program pools healthcare resources – including providers, referral organizations (which include insurance companies, governments, medical travel facilitators, and TPAs) and health payers – together, consolidating their unique offerings to improve partnerships, patients, and profitability.
The benefits to industry players include:
Improved Access to buyers/payers
Global Provider Network solves the problem of access. Patients who require complex heart surgeries, for example, know exactly where to find providers that can offer that without jumping from hospital to hospital, while providers that offer world-class services across several specialties know exactly where their patients are with a push of a button.
Through GPN, Providers gain access to the largest pool of referral organizations, who effectively manage and refer large groups of health payers. This ensures patient referrals are faster than ever and the patient base grow geometrically.
Improved Expertise
GPN not only allows providers easy and fast access to health buyers and payers, it also opens the door to collaboration with other healthcare providers and organizations who are at the top of their game. This results in an international network of medical teams that share ideas, educational resources, training, and expertise to further improve the quality of their offerings and services.
Leveraging the large pool of medical experts in the network, referral organizations are also able to easily access providers for second opinions and follow-up care to improve the patient experience and maintain the integrity of care.
Improved Revenue
With faster and larger patient referrals comes a faster revenue stream and greater profitability. Providers as well as referral organizations are able to scale their revenues and improve their access to more commissions and discounts by leveraging the Global Provider Network.
The Global Provider Network also offers a wider visibility to healthcare providers and physicians, ensuring continuous patient referrals and offering an opportunity to expand and diversify their services to reach a wider market.
Access to Digital Solutions
The project unleashes ways industry players can leverage digital solutions to make certain processes easy. Medical travel processes, such as payments, communication with clients, provider-provider collaborations, and networking between industry players, such as referral organizations and providers, have slowed down growth for many providers, and also undermined the patient experience.
GPN helps industry players introduce new gateways to the global market, adopting right tech platforms and digital tools to improve patient access and communication, and also create a strong network between providers and referral organizations.
Increase Access to Medical Tourism Training
This robust program provides a unique advantage of access to medical tourism resources, training, certification, and accreditation programs to increase access to global best practices and establish greater trust in the medical travel space.
With certifications and training programs, such as the Global Healthcare Accreditation’s Certified Medical Travel Professional, Medical Travel Facilitator Certification, and the GHA Accreditation for Medical Travel, industry players learn international best practices in medical travel and how to achieve quality patient outcomes and excellent patient experience.
The GPN is available to all health buyers, including insurance companies, governments, TPAs, Medical Travel Facilitators, and other medical travel businesses, as well as healthcare providers across the globe who are looking to join the shift in medical tourism, and scale up their businesses for maximal profitability.
