Why Medical Tourism Facilitators Get A Bad Name

Dear medical travel facilitator,

If I were a patient whom you are soliciting for business, here is what I would likely learn about you on the internet.

You may be a very nice, well-meaning person operating a small travel agency or a small business. You may even hold a business degree with a medical tourism specialization. You offer medical services, but you are not a medical practitioner, so what’s the deal with all the medical information on your site?

You – and your competitors – boast how great each one of you is. What is the evidence?

It doesn’t matter anyway, because all you are really doing is offering me ground services – I believe, what the travel industry calls inbound services.

Why do I doubt your medical tourism services?

1. Overstating capabilities and experience

You say, We are already working with health insurance companies, health organizations and hospitals from UAE, Middle east, South Africa and are well experienced for all the process required. (sic) This is a bold, grand statement that isn’t held up by the spelling, grammar and format you are using.

2. Cookie-cutter website design with empty website pages

Testimonials is a blank page. Blog is a blank page. Your packages indiscriminately list all the hotels and tour packages one could ever want, with no concession to the special needs of medical travelers.

3. Making false promises

You say, We take care of entire process, by the time we get the medical reports, we provide you with the choice of quotations from many countries, we help you to breakdown of excessive cost, we help negotiate with the hospitals, if required, we send the visa invites, we arrange the pickup from airport and take care till the patient is dropped back to the airport after the treatment. (sic)

You clearly don’t understand the processes of a medical journey. Do you think I would trust you to get me quotations from many countries? Surely you don’t do the airport pickups or hospital negotiations in all those countries.

4. Poorly organized presentation of services

See Number 3.

5. Incorrect spelling and grammar

Too many examples to list. Over and over, misspellings, misunderstandings, grammatical errors are obvious to anyone who has had even a modicum of patient experience.

6. Email contact is a gmail or hotmail account

You want me to send private medical information to your gmail or yahoo account? Why don’t you have a secure server on which my medical information rests?

7. For you – special price – free

You say, We don’t charge any facilitation fees from our companies and patients.

How can this be? Are you getting paid by hospitals or doctors for referrals? This is not ethical.

8. You give me a guarantee

Huh? What kind of guarantee is this: If you are not happy with the results of your surgery, the 2nd surgery will be fully covered. Do you think this fills me full of confidence in your doctors for the first surgery?

9. Call now; operators are standing by

Try this sometimes as a patient, and see what happens. See if anyone picks up when you call, or do you get a call us later message? Offering this service poorly is almost as bad as using a generic email response to an enquiry.

Dear medical tourism facilitator, I know there are medical tourism companies that are very good and very helpful. But, as a patient navigating strange territory, it’s so hard to find them.