Patients travel for care for various reasons
including the availability of specialized treatments, access to the latest
procedures, long wait times or the high cost of care in their home countries,
or the desire to recover away from friends and colleagues.
Making
and reconciling payments in medical tourism – mostly large and crossing
international borders – can be challenging.
Many
medical tourists pay for their care themselves, without the involvement of
insurance companies. At this often stressful time, most patients would benefit
from peace of mind, but the payment process is anything, but peaceful. Patients
are often unsure of the best way to initiate an international payment. Exchange
fees are often high and almost always confusing. Patients can never be quite
sure they are paying the correct amount. Worrying about whether their payment
has been properly received is counter-productive to health and recovery.
On the
healthcare institution side, the reconciliation issues for international
payments can also be very complex and time-consuming. Healthcare facilities
find matching payments to specific patients and procedures to be difficult and
often encounter additional processing fees for these payments. Most processes
tend to be a highly manual with lots of room for error.
Cross-Border Payment
As
facilities look to attract more medical tourists, they’re going to have to
consider the impact of managing a larger volume of cross-border payments – for
their patients and their own operations. If your institution is already serving
a large number of international patients, and/or looking at attracting a larger
number in the coming years, here are a few things to consider when about
patient payments.
·
Demand
for related support services – With patients around the world making large sum
payments from different time zones, the number and frequency of payment-related
questions and inquiries will rise – at all hours and in a variety of languages.
Most hospitals aren’t structured to handle payment-related questions 24/7. They
also do not want to be in that business. Consider how you can offer this
service without adding additional overhead and cost.
·
Payment
convenience – As international travel for healthcare becomes more common,
patients will look for more convenient, cost-efficient and transparent channels
to make their payments. This will drive more of these transactions to web
channels (vs. traditional agent-based organizations and financial institutions)
due to the ability to have funds transferred quickly and safely; and to track
payment status online, via email or SMS. These capabilities can also ease the
support services burden.
·
Familiar/local
payment options – The ability to offer international patients familiar payment
options in their local currency, using a simple web experience can be a
significant differentiator in the patient experience. Channels that offer
discounted currency conversion rates compared to those offered by banks in the
patients’ home countries will likely also be more attractive.
·
Compliance
and transparency – With the increased threat of terrorism, and the focus on
financing sources, there will be a much greater emphasis on transparency and
compliance on any entity accepting large, cross-border payments. Hospitals will
need to be able to quickly verify sources, ensure strict compliance with
anti-money-laundering laws and be able to provide detailed transaction
reporting for all large, cross-border payment transactions.
Payments
in medical tourism are often an after-thought, but as international medical
travel becomes more common and more funds change hands, it will take on a
greater significance – for both the payers and the payees.
Healthcare
institutions serious about attracting more international patients will need to
address the challenges surrounding payments in medical tourism sooner rather
than later by offering their international patients a stress-free, localized
payment experience; and streamlining their own payment collection and
reconciliation efforts in the back office.
Mike
Massaro
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