Medical tourism agent

A medical tourism agent (also health tourism provider or medical tourism provider) is an organisation or a company which seeks to bring together a prospective patient with a service provider, usually a hospital or a clinic. These organisations are generally facilitators and developers of medical tourism, which brings into play a number of issues that do not apply when a patient stays within their own country of origin.

Some of these organisations and companies specialise in certain areas of healthcare, such as cosmetic surgery, dentistry or transplant surgery, while others are more generalised in their approach, providing multiple services over a wide range of medical specialities. These organisations may also focus on providing services in a single country or they may provide access to treatment across multiple nations.

Medical quality standards vary around the world, and international accreditation is relatively new. For these reasons, potential clients may face unknowns and risks related to quality, safety and ethics. Medical tourists look to health tourism providers to provide information about quality, safety and legal issues, but the quality of such information and services varies on the size, scale and the standards of the facilitators themselves.

These agencies can be categorised based on the extent of their services and their scale of operations. In general, larger companies provide more services in more locations and with more hospitals/clinics.

These are 'one man shows' or agents who are usually former medical tourists themselves or doctors with ties to specific hospitals. They generally promote their services through a network of references and local advertisements and due their limited size and capabilities, they do not provide many services and usually rely on the referred hospital and the medical traveller to make the necessary arrangements for medical travel.

Since they rely on the referred hospital for a significant amount of logistical support, such operators usually work with one or very few hospitals. Their source of income are referral fees paid by the hospital for each medical tourist.

These companies focus on a single medical destination such as a particular region or a country and promote medical care in hospitals/clinics in that location. Since they are usually larger and more organised, they offer services such as airport pickups, hotel accommodation, translators and other services that they medical traveller may require, their services are advertised through a website, marketing and also a network of former clients and doctors.

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Wikipedia