medical tourism company

MTQUA Medical Travel Patient Registry service

Posted by Julie Munro on September 16, 2011   |   Comments Off on MTQUA Medical Travel Patient Registry service

Rest assured of your safety and quality of treatment -and care

Medical Travel Quality Alliance offers this confidential service to medical tourists, their families and loved ones, and their home-based doctors as assurance a patient’s medical treatment and care is proceeding as planned.

Confidential support

The information you provide stays in our private, secure database, to be used only when those you have named ask for our assistance.

Register now.

When you register your intended plans as a medical traveler with the MTQUA Medical Travel Patient Registry, you are not alone on your medical travel journey. If your family, friends and loved ones have any concerns, if your communications with them are broken, if you have any sort of problem, we are there for you. A number to call, a person to speak with, 24 hours a day, seven days a week during your medical travel.

Additional registry services

At your request, we will also provide these and other patient services that you may need.

  • Professional review of the selected hospital
  • Professional review of the selected doctor
  • Professional review of your treatment plan
  • Professional review of your care management plan

These professional reviews will be done by specialty physicians or surgeons, registered nurses or care managers as appropriate in advance of travel. Similar reviews will be done post treatment as needed or requested.

  • Expert review of bills paid to hospital, medical tourism company and/or insurer
  • Notification to embassy or other appropriate legal entity in certain circumstances if required
  • Monitor your treatment progress at your destination to ensure your medical treatment and care is proceeding as planned
  • Advise your family or other contacts of your daily progress

Upon registration with the MTQUA Medical Travel Patient Registry, you will be given contact information for an MTQUA representative accessible at your medical destination 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Medical travel companies, insurers and other medical tourism providers may also register their international patients with the MTQUA Medical Tourist Patient Registry.

Register now for MTQUA Medical Travel Patient Registry.


There is no charge to register.
[contact-form 5 “MTQUA Medical Travel Patient Registry”]

Getting outstanding medical treatment abroad of the best quality and highest standards

Posted by Julie Munro on September 5, 2011   |   1 Comment

What creates outstanding medical treatment abroad?

When MTQUA representatives review hospitals for our annual list of World’s Best Hospitals for Medical Tourists, these are some of the criteria considered. These are not listed in their order of importance.

1. Medical quality and outcomes

2. International patient communication and care management

3. International patient marketing

4. Value for service

5. Patient safety and security

6. Transparency and disclosure

7. Attention to other unique needs of the medical traveler

8. Website

9. Management

10. Partnerships, alliances and external support

See the Top 10 list of World’s Best Hospitals for Medical Tourists

How to get the best care and best value in medical tourism

Medical tourists have a world of choice in health care and are taking advantage of this. But the information they have to base their choices on is often bewildering, confusing, and wrong.

Patients looking for medical care and treatment abroad need accurate up-to-date and reliable information. Whether a website or a medical tourism company can provide the sort of information that will answer concerns about best quality or high standards of patient safety and care management is often a concern.

Some patients now consider accreditation status and word of mouth recommendations before they make their choice of hospital, and that’s a definite improvement over relying only on the internet for information or choosing the lowest cost.

Issues such as patient safety and security, international patient operations and protocols, marketing integrity, transparency and facilitator review should be weighed heavily in any selection of hospital by the medical traveler.

To get the best value and care from going abroad for treatment to the best hospitals or other hospitals in the best medical destinations, MTQUA recommends that medical tourists consider using a qualified medical travel company or care manager who has professional trained facilitators or agents on site to take care of any circumstances that may arise, medical or otherwise.

Be informed when planning medical travel vacation. Use medical travel care manager to help you understand.

Posted by Julie Munro on August 26, 2011   |   No Comments

Patients, especially medical travelers, should ask for – and receive – information about the hospital where their procedure is to be done. This includes infection rates, success rates for this procedure and with the specific surgeon.

Medical tourists need to know, among other things, who will be the surgeons and what are their backgrounds and experience.

This information is not just hard to get. whether from a hospital or medical tourism company, even if it exists. It’s often difficult to understand, and hard to compare. It’s out of context. Indeed, it’s often useless or meaningless.

Finding medical quality information

Searching out medical quality may be as hard as looking for the needle in a haystack.

One health care expert in America, planning an elective surgery for himself, decided to find out as much as he could about his hospital, his doctor, his costs, and his surgery. His conclusion?

It was impossible to determine, in advance, my likely costs or to obtain truly comparable costs among different providers.

He asked about a lot of patient safety issues – radiation safety procedures such as safety monitoring and likely dose before his CT scan (he got that information but wasn’t sure that even he knew how to interpret it).

He was told the general hospital-specific outcomes for his procedure but was less sure about the comparability of definitions and surveillance techniques.

H was not successful in comparing surgeons’ outcomes, even generally, much less outcomes for specific procedures (and confidence intervals on those estimates).

He did get detailed information about infection control procedures and data… but reluctantly and only after he told them he had run the infections programs for the Center for Disease Control in the U.S.

Good luck in understanding the medical information you get

If patients ask, they can find some information if they work hard at it. But even he — with medical experience and professional background — had trouble figuring out what the information meant.

Top 10 medical tourism do’s and don’ts

Posted by Julie Munro on May 20, 2009   |   No Comments

For a happy, high quality, stress-free medical vacation with a great outcome, take note of the following suggestions.

1. DO go where you know you’ll get excellent medical treatment.

Many medical tourism companies promote countries or hospitals they have very little information about. When choosing a medical tourism company or agent, make sure the hospitals these companies are promoting actually work with the company or agent. You can ask the hospital for a list of the medical tourism companies they accept.

When major countries promote themselves as “medical tourism” destinations, they may be promoting only a few of the hospitals with the highest medical standards or they may be promoting the country as a whole without heed to the quality differences they are imposing on unwitting medical tourists. It’s good to know which it is.

2. DO plan ahead, especially if you’ll be traveling at peak tourist times.

You’ll be competing for treatment with other medical travelers and health tourists, and for hotel space with regular tourists. The most popular times medical tourists choose to go abroad for treatment often coincide with peak tourist times. Excellent surgeons don’t grow on trees.

3. DON’T rely mainly on the Internet for your research.

The best surgeons don’t need to solicit business. Hospital web sites are advertising tools that often contain outdated or incomplete information, especially about staff and costs.Chat rooms, testimonials, patient ratings are additional sources of information found on the Internet.

Use websites such as this as an alternative for information about finding quality care for international patients. MTQUA publishes an annual list of the Top 10 World’s Best Hospitals for Medical Tourists™.

4. DO ask about a surgeon’s fellowships or specialized training.

Does he or she regularly attend international professional meetings? How recently has she practiced or trained in the U.S. or Canada? Or in Europe? How many years of experience does he have in the specialty? Medical tourism companies should have this information. If you’re working with a certified medical travel concierge, he or she will most certainly have this.

5. DO invest a few dollars in a telephone call.

Your conversation with the surgeon’s representative or with your medical travel care manager will be a good indicator of the attention you’ll get later. All good medical tourism companies will be happy to arrange this for you.

6. DON’T be stingy with your vacation time.

Take advantage of the medical attention that’s available to you during recovery so that your return home is uneventful. Better to spend an extra day or two in recovery than to start traveling too soon. Your surgeon or medical travel advisor will be happy to guide you on this.

7. DON’T cut costs by going with the “lowest bidder.”

Keeping down the cost of surgery or staying at a budget hotel may sound like a good idea at first, but experience shows you may be sorry later.

This is especially so with plastic surgery. Plastic surgeons are reluctant to revise another surgeon’s results so if you make a mistake, you may live with it for a long time. The better solution is to use an experienced medical travel company and a top surgeon.

8. DO get everything (or as much as you can) in writing.

Before you go, know your costs, procedures, dates and times of the consultation and surgery, number of nights in the hospital and contact names and telephone numbers your family can use to reach you.

9. DON’T feel you’re “stuck” with the doctor you first chose when you were at home.

When you finally meet your surgeon, don’t be seduced by the Botoxed doctor with the smooth bedside manner, or intimidated by the one who wants to ratchet up the procedures and costs.

If you have second thoughts, don’t be afraid to ask your medical travel company or medical travel concierge for another doctor in the same hospital or a different hospital. It’s your right as a patient to get a second opinion or a second doctor you trust. MTQUA provides a list of medical tourist rights.

10. DON’T take stupid chances.

There is always some doctor somewhere who will agree to anything you want. This may be the only time you will travel for medical treatment. Do it right. Medical tourists often have time and work constraints, and want to get things done as quickly as possible.Medical tourism companies rely on the individual medical traveler to take responsibility for aspects of the medical journey.

BONUS TIP

No matter what we say here, we KNOW you won’t pay attention. You WILL feel stuck with a doctor you don’t care for. You WILL take stupid chances – you don’t think you are, but…. You will get the surgeon’s credentials and you will accept them without understanding them.

Many times, we have received phone calls from non-clients asking for help. Unfortunately, by the time you call us, the damage has been done, the money has been spent, and we have very little we can do to help.

11. Above all, DO use a trained medical travel planner from a reputable medical tourism company.

Most medical tourism companies have personnel to guide you in making your choices. A good, experienced medical travel advisor has a direct pipeline into the best doctors and hospitals. In the long run, you will save money, get the best treatment, have a stress-free recovery and return home truly relaxed.