Transparency of care in medical tourism is very essential component for overall success. Since medical tourism involves patients traveling to across the border, it might not be possible for patient to collect all necessary information in advance about healthcare indicators at destination. Hence, it’s essential that healthcare service provider should provide necessary information in utmost transparent manners to protect patient and medical tourism industry.
Patients should be made aware of any issues which might not be in knowledge of the international patient, including but not limited to cultural, legal and ethical issues.
Healthcare provider must disclose proper information about qualifications, licensing status and training of the healthcare professionals / surgeons / technical team. The information about the success results of operating teams should not be exaggerated. Medication errors, infection rates and death rates are factors that consumer should know prior to travel to destination. The healthcare provider should make available all destination related healthcare indicator for patients so they can prepare well in advance.
As much possible pre-operative diagnostic procedure should be done at home country of a patient to rule out any doubts, which could lead to non-performance of surgery or complication during / after surgery. There are many cases in which patients were refused by an international hospital because a patient didn’t meet surgical criteria, most of the time such as situation could have been avoided by doing few investigations in advance.
Hospitals should also arrange for information about country’s healthcare indicator including – recent disease outbreaks, prevalent, common communicable diseases or any specific disorder which might be importnat for a patient from a specific geography, etc.
Such practice is essential to create transparency of care in medical tourism. Above points are not comprehensive and are not discussed in complete intensity but provide good nutshell information for both patient and healthcare provider in relation to transparency in medical tourism.
by Dr Prem Jagyasi
www.DrPrem.com