Medical Tourism Expert Breaks Down Step-by-step Medical Tourism Program Development for Providers

Dec. 27, 2011 - PRLog -- Denver, Colorado USA -- When Maria Todd isn't busy contracting with hospitals, health insurers and other healthcare providers, she teaches others how to create their own medical tourism programs and prepare for international or domestic hospital accreditation and reimbursement contracting. She shares her tips and techniques with government ministries,  hoteliers, spa owners, and medical tourism provider networks in "Handbook of Medical Tourism Program Development: Developing Globally Integrated Health Systems" (ISBN-10: 1439813140, released: December 8, 2011)

Todd invites readers to learn more about the techniques of globally integrated healthcare delivery, ways to improve provider skill sets, technology, infrastructure, communications, quality, safety and get new marketing ideas. She also shares her personal stories from more than 30 years in the business. She quickly goes over the philosophy behind medical tourism and its opportunities and fallacies, before launching into a set of projects for her readers. The projects not only include instructions, but also some information that governments and hospital administrators might not know, such as facts, the how to negotiate, and why they should care about third-party reimbursement, and how they the business may (or may not) involve group health and employer-sponsored health insurance programs going forward as the nascent market matures.

The included projects aim to help medical tourism hopefuls develop their discipline and techniques, such as how to build infrastructure, policies and procedures for international health travel patients, and how to integrate the episode of care from diagnosis through post operative outcomes monitoring and measurement in a different location from the surgery by a different set of providers. While Todd focuses on the infrastructure and benchmarking to prove the validity and value of the program, she also instructs readers how to create compelling arguments to third-party payers based on realistic market conditions, if this is what they wish to do. She also covers the non-clinical fundamentals of being a medical tourism provider, such as the staffing, marketing, and logistics of medical tourism.

"For years' I've been consulting in the field with my colleagues in the Mercury Healthcare Advisory Group, I wished I could have offered this book prior to our arrival onsite at the clients' locations," Todd says. "Now there is such a book and we can share what we know and help others better themselves even if there is no budget for consultants."

The book will be used as a textbook included in courses taught at the Managed Care Institute. An upcoming three day course on Medical Tourism Program Development will be offered in March 2012, in Denver. The course includes field trips to the busy Denver International Airport to meet with Airport officials to understand the resources and challenges of logistics for medical travel, and also includes a field trip through the Grand Hyatt Downtown Denver with the general manager, housekeeping manager, safety and security manager and executive chef to gain practical experience in vetting and inspecting tourism supply chain partners for medical tourism and health travel appropriateness.  The course is open to only 24 students per session and is offered twice in 2012.  More information can be obtained by calling the Institute at 800.209.7263. Other similar courses will be offered in 2012 tailored to the needs of group health plan administrators and established travel agents exploring Medical Tourism.

Intended Audience
Todd hopes that "Handbook of Medical Tourism Program Development: Developing Globally Integrated Health Systems" becomes a guide for aspiring government agencies, physicians, hospitals, hoteliers, and spa owners. She hopes that journalists and media outlets who report on medical tourism industry developments and need a critical guide will also refer to the variety of examples, checklists and best practices in the book in order to ask deeper, critical questions before simply echoing propaganda and hype of new market entrants.

She believes her stories and techniques will inspire readers to improve and better structure their medical tourism offering and make them even better, safer, more responsive healthcare provider organizations, not just copies of early adopters.

Availability
"Handbook of Medical Tourism Program Development: Developing Globally Integrated Health Systems" is available for sale online at Amazon.com, who is experiencing overwhelming demand and a challenge to keep the book in stock, and other channels including the Publisher's website at ProductivityPress.com.  The book will also be out in Kindle and other e-book reader formats soon, but no date has yet been announced.

Industry Reviews
More than 100 copies sold in pre-release, and it continues to show strong post-release sales. The book has received rave reviews and endorsements from the world's most respected medical tourism and group health benefits thought leaders including Armando Baez the former Chairman of the Board of the Self-Insured Institute of America who said " ...the book explains the elements required to succeed in this difficult by essential business."

Chatree Duangnet, MD FAAP and CEO of Bangkok Hospital Medical Center commented "...a concrete and practical roadmap in developing true 'medical tourism health delivery systems' in the real world". Dr Chatree leads an integrated health delivery system of 28 hospitals and over 5000 beds in Asia.

Other reviewers include Ruben Toral, former marketing director at Bumrungrad International Hospital, Jacqueline Hodges, MBA RHIA who led the first U.S. hospital through both ISO and Joint Commission accreditation as that hospital's Chief Operating Officer, along with executives and health industry leaders from US and international destination hospitals successfully engaged in medical tourism operations.

Other Books Authored by Fellow Mercury Healthcare Advisory Group Colleagues
Productivity Press also released these titles in December, including:

•   "Performance-based Medicine: Creating the High-Performance Network to Optimize Managed Care Relationships", by William J DeMarco, MA, CMC (ISBN: 978-1-4398-1288-4)

•   "Managed HealthCare in the New Millennium: Innovative Financial Modeling for the 21st Century" by David I Samuels, MPA,  FHFMA (ISBN 978-1-4398-4030-6), and

•   "The Medical Services Professional Career Guidebook: Charting a Development Plan for Success" by Donna Goestenkors CPMSM, (ISBN:978-1-4398-4478-6) which covers practices, procedures and requirements of medical staff credentialing and privileging professional development.

Todd's other recent medical tourism title, "The Medical Tourism Facilitator's Handbook" (ISBN-978-1-4398-1283-9) also just released by Productivity Press, and was written for both the independent medical tourism facilitators, travel agents, and hospital-employed facilitator audiences.

Todd and fifteen other renowned Mercury Healthcare Advisory Group members (most also published trade press book authors in the healthcare administration with multiple titles each) are all available for international speaking engagements, government, provider and investor consulting, and book signing appearances through the Mercury Speakers Bureau.

The book's foreword was written by Keith Pollard, of the International Medical Tourism Journal.

The book also covers medical tourism complications liability, authored by Tracy Simons of Custom Assurance Placements, and quality measurement and transparency authored by Lisa Beichl, MBA of Transparent Borders LLC.  Beichl was formerly with the actuarial consultancy, Milliman and specialized in their International Care Guidelines, and held executive positions with Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich Re and United Healthcare. She too is a member of the Mercury Healthcare Advisory Group.

REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

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Maria Todd has been involved in healthcare and medical travel logistics for more than 30 years. She is the founder of Mercury Healthcare International, the largest health travel management company focused on medical tourism program development for the employer group health and wellness markets, expatriate group health benefits management and emergency assistance for traveling employees.

She is the author of 9 industry best-selling books and has personally assisted in the project development of more than successful 1500 integrated health delivery systems worldwide since 1993. She holds advanced degrees in health administration, is a health law paralegal, a certified mediator, a former surgical nurse and former contract negotiator for a large HMO that is now a part of United Healthcare.