FEATURE HEALTHCARE TRAVEL
LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE There is much talk about ‘medical cities’ and ‘medical clusters’ mostly amongst people whose living is made from consultancy on developing such concepts. If you’re a government, a tourism association or a healthcare provider involved in such a project, make sure you learn some lessons from the history of such ventures. Back in the 90’s, a group of American investors plunged $500 million into Health Care International, a plan to create an international treatment centre on Clydebank in Scotland, which was intended to attract patients from all over the world. The venture was a financial disaster. Some Arab investors bought it out, invested more and tried again. And again, it went bust. Why was it an unmitigated disaster? A
failure to understand marketing, a failure to understand the market and ignorance of the fact that ‘location, location, location’ is as important in the medical tourism business as it is in the retail sector. The Americans involved had little real grasp of the international patient business. The Abu Dhabi investors who bought it out had even less. But they both had a vision of a booming medical tourism market and their mistake cost them millions and millions of dollars.
“HIGH QUALITY, LOW COST, STATE-OF-THE-ART TECHNOLOGY...”
..is the catchphrase of nearly every healthcare provider in the medical tourism business. So what makes you different? Where’s your competitive advantage? Do you have to be the cheapest? In healthcare, what does low cost imply about the quality of treatment? Success in medical tourism is about
understanding the specific needs of the medical travellers that you are targeting and meeting those needs. And remember that patients are healthcare consumers. They make choices based on emotional decisions and perceptions not on whether you’ve got ‘state of the art technology’. Please, please.... let’s see some new thinking in medical tourism and start focusing on medical tourists as consumers.
A FEEBLE FIRST TOUCH Nowadays, the first place that many patients go for information about overseas treatment is the web. So, you invest in a decent website, promote your services on sites like Treatment Abroad, buy the services of a search engine optimisation company or run a Pay Per Click programme on Google Adwords. And as a result, you attract potential patients to your business. The patients then email you or fill in an enquiry form. That enquiry ends up in someone’s inbox within your organisation. Your ‘first touch’ in the patient relationship is about to take place. What happens next can make a really big difference to your conversion rate. What often happens is this: The enquiry remains unanswered for days, a week or more, or doesn’t get answered at all. The patient goes
«Don’t be afraid that a patient might say something negative about their treatment»
elsewhere in the meantime. The response to the enquiry fails one or all of the basic criteria of quality for response to a customer enquiry: Clarity: It’s written in a language that doctors and nurses understand but patients don’t. Tone of voice: It’s cold and clinical rather than warm and friendly. Response to questions: It doesn’t answer specific questions that the patient has asked. Contact details: Believe it or not,
Arab Health Show Issue 2012 129
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196