Technology plays a vital role in any business, and medical tourism is no different.
While many international patient departments and medical tourism facilitators continue to use excel spreadsheets, email, and paper-and-pen to manage patients, others have implemented leading technology solutions to improve efficiency, increase conversion-rates, and enhance the overall patient experience.
A number of Medical Tourism Association® members have chosen to implement the Global Patient Management SystemTM (GPMS) to manage their international patient programs. Various factors including cost, efficiency and security influenced their decisions.
Lance Barnes, director of International & Strategic Services at Indiana University Health, reviewed Salesforce and GPMSTM. For him, the choice was based primarily on cost and customization.
“The Health Flights Solution software product is designed for the medical tourism industry,” said Barnes. “Salesforce requires significant customization by a third-party company.”
Indiana University Health, located in Indianapolis, Ind., is one of the largest and most comprehensive academic healthcare systems in the United States. A unique partnership with Indiana University School of Medicine, the largest medical school in the United States, enables physicians to access innovative treatments and leading edge therapies. Barnes believes that GPMSTM will help University Health manage both a growing international and domestic patient business through a Destination Medicine model.
Provision Center for Proton Therapy, located in Tennessee, is one of just 14 proton therapy treatment centers in the United States. The Knoxville-based facility provides the perfect combination of personalized, comprehensive patient care and leading-edge technology, offering one of the most advanced cancer treatments in the world.
Dawn Burnett, director of Global Medical Tourism at Provision, believes her decision was based on a number of factors, the most significant of which are increased efficiency, security, and the ability to handle large medical records to support cancer treatments.
More than 80 countries and territories have data protection laws, making reasonable safeguards imperative for protecting patient information from inappropriate use or disclosure. Both Indiana Health and Provision believe HIPAA-compliant systems are critical to achieving organizational goals. Burnett needed a system that was both secure and cloud-based in order to allow
users, patients and the facilitators that Provision works with secure access from anywhere in the world.
Violations of country or region-specific security or medical privacy regulations including common practices, such as the use of non-encrypted emails to collect medical records or send treatment plans, can lead to severe civil and criminal penalties. This is why Barnes believes that “patients and payers having the ability to securely upload medical records avoid any HIPAA concerns when patients send them via email or fax.”
Security components also reduce response time by allowing patients to share medical records securely with internal physicians and staff for review. Burnett said that the ability to upload medical documents “is absolutely necessary in our evaluation of patient leads.”
For management to make marketing, strategic or operational decisions, access to real-time data is important. When discussing GPMS’ reporting capabilities, Barnes said, “Real-time, on-demand reporting is very important to IU Health. We rely on the reporting to help guide our operations and provide timely updates to our senior leadership.”
A sustainable growth in the medical tourism industry is dependent on both B-2-C interactions, and strong B2B ties and partnerships. One of the primary differentiators of GPMS is the platform’s collaborative capabilities. For Burnett, this feature is a “must have,” giving her the ability to seamlessly and securely work with referrers, facilitators, embassies and self-insured employers.
“With our unique cancer care network concept, these entities must be able to tap into the system,” she said. “It allows processes to be efficient and consistent.” And, Burnett believes that allowing partners to upload medical records and images allows Provision to respond faster, close more leads, and support its “culture-of-care” model.
Improving the patient experience affects the bottom line and satisfied patients are the best form of advertising. The patient experience is influenced by not only treatment or surgery, but by the entire interaction with the healthcare team. Creating and implementing repeatable business processes through the use of work-flows, templates and scripts, and clearly defining roles and responsibilities are ways that contribute to the delivery of a superior patient experience.
Said Barnes, “We anticipate Global Patient Management SystemTM will help us increase our efficiency, and more effectively manage our business processes to provide an enhanced experience to our patients and payer customers.”
To learn more about the Global Patient Management SystemTM, contact Health Flights Solutions, info@ healthflightssolutions.com