Care management for medical tourists comes in many forms. Most often, a medical travel company will contract with a local travel or destination agency to provide “ground services” for the patient.
In other cases, a medical travel company provides a a more extensive or comprehensive service for the medical traveler. This service can be the equivalent of a care manager, offering patient liaison services, nursing support, and medical travel planning. In such cases, the care manager may also function as a patient advocate or patient representative.
Medical concierge
A medical concierge is often found on site at the medical destination. The medical concierge has no medical training or experience. “Medical” refers only to the function of ensuring the patient gets to all medical appointments on time, and visiting a patient in the hospital.
The medical concierge may function as a personal assistant, providing services from airport pickup to family liaison and shopping assistance. The services of a medical concierge are restricted to not much more than a travel guide.
International patient care manager
The international patient care manager is a professional trained to support and help you manage your medical and surgical care away from home. The international patient care manager speaks the local language and has access to a network of local medical support services that you may need.
The international patient care manager is your advocate, your agent and your partner. The international patient care manager takes responsibility for your care at the medical destination.
The patient care manager helps plan your procedures, coordinates with the medical team to ensure that all hospital and surgical requirements are satisfied, facilitates all consultations, communication, activities, and events, provides support and reassurance to the patient, family and friends, and manages all post-surgery recovery needs and services.
Having a patient care manager working for you gives you immeasurable confidence, support, and reassurance at a time when you need to put all your energies and thoughts toward preparing for your procedures and having a stress-free recovery.
Should an unanticipated event occur, the patient care manager, on duty on site at your medical destination, can step in to do whatever needs to be done, to make new arrangements or change existing ones, and to provide any other support necessary to keep you on your path to comfortable, uneventful medical care, surgical procedure, and recovery.
