Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In addition to coordinating health travel logistics and gathering medical records, medical tourism facilitators play the role of travel agent, appointment setter, concierge, hotel reservationist, tour operator, and hand-holder to clients seeking health services domestically and abroad. Addressing the range of issues that could emerge as clients travel, the <STRONG>Medical Tourism Facilitator's Handbook</STRONG> is a must-have resource of hard-to-find tools, checklists, terminology, and other information for hospital-based, lay facilitators, travel agents, and even retired physicians and nurses. <UL><LI>Supplies a detailed understanding of patient needs and expectations </LI><LI>Includes access to a regularly updated website with helpful worksheets and reference material</LI></UL>Using a conversational tone, the book illustrates the best and worst case scenarios that can occur when coordinating clients travels. It covers international travel logistics, where to find answers to immigration concerns, confidentiality / privacy issues, and unanticipated care in transit in the event of complications or missed connections. The book delivers a fast moving presentation of useful information and teaches readers how to decode the language, what to look for in terms of safety and quality, how to decode hospital facilitator agent agreements, and how to anticipate clients needs and expectations"--

"Introduction In a nutshell, medical tourism is the practice of traveling outside one's hometown to access medical or dental care, or costly and sophisticated diagnostic testing. For most medical travelers, depending on the destination location and procedure sought, the savings can be from 50% to as great as 90% of the price paid at home. It amazes me when people in the health care and insurance industries look at me dumbfounded when I speak about medical tourism. Some furrow their eyebrows, others shake their heads in bewilderment, and still others dismiss the idea with some offhand comment that if they ignore it, it will not exist. I have a cat that does the last response to many things, but she's a cat. Most of the folks I hang out with are executives in health care or insurance, health law attorneys, academics, or health care professionals. Not cats! So when they dismiss this growing trend, I have to wonder where they will be in the next 5 years. In the United States, there are around 7,500 hospitals with their doors still open. That too, amazes me when I see who is at the helm, and their leadership style, market awareness, and lack of strategic planning. According to a study done by Dr. Paul Keckley of Deloitte in 2008, each one of those US hospitals lost an average of 10 cases from their community to somewhere else on the planet. Worse yet, each hospital lost an average of $21,000 in revenue, (not billed charges) to hospitals elsewhere in the world--hospitals that collected 100% of their fees on those cases, from cash paying customers that went there with US dollars in hand, ready to pay their bill in advance for the high-quality and high-tech health care services rendered. Although the Deloitte Center for Health Care Solutions' volume estimates do not appear to be"--