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FEATURE HEALTHCARE TRAVEL


future treatment based on recommending a friend or relative?


IGNORING ‘WORD OF MOUTH’ Patients can also be ambassadors for your business through web based ‘word of mouth’ recommendation. Increasingly, healthcare consumers worldwide want to hear from ‘people like me’ before they buy a product or service. Patients are naturally apprehensive about travelling for treatment. So, the views and opinions of other patients are an important factor in reducing worries about medical travel, and choosing the right destination or treatment provider. Sites such as Medical Tourism Ratings and Reviews and condition specific forums such as Knee Guru enable patients to write about their experiences of medical tourism and surgery abroad. Don’t be afraid that a patient might say


something negative about their treatment. Most of them are incredibly positive about their medical tourism experience. Encourage your patients to write about their experience of your services. Email them a list of websites where they can tell the story of their surgery or rate your facilities.


«Patient satisfaction is affected by every stage of the medical tourism process»


TURNING DOWN FREE PUBLICITY Putting together a well-written press release can take time and effort so most businesses don’t bother. In medical tourism, healthcare providers have some great patient stories to tell; these stories can get coverage in local newspapers and local radio where the patient lives. If you develop a standard press release template for patient success stories, you can adapt it in 5-10 minutes to create a press release about a specific patient. You then ask the patient the names of their local regional newspapers and radio stations, and use the web to locate the editorial email addresses. It’s quick and simple to do, and it’s free. Compared to other marketing activities for your hospital, clinic or service, creating and distributing such press releases requires little effort, and can achieve significant impact.


AND FINALLY, DON’T FORGET ABOUT FEEDBACK So, the patient came and went. What did you learn from them that might help you to do a better job next time? Patient satisfaction is affected by every stage of the medical tourism process, from the response to the email enquiry or the phone call to make an appointment, to the post-operative consultation and follow up. Patient satisfaction can be assessed very easily using post-treatment paper based questionnaires, online surveys using low cost tools such as Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey or a well planned and structured telephone call. So, why do most medical tourism businesses forget about measuring patient satisfaction? Patient feedback is invaluable to growing your business:  It tells you what you did right...and what you did wrong, so you can fix any problems for future patents.  It can be used to prove your credentials to future patients.  In itself, it generates additional patient satisfaction. Patients like to be asked what they think. ■


AH Arab Health Show Issue 2012 131


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