The Certified Medical Tourism Professional® (CMTP) certification provides healthcare professionals, travel agents, facilitators, insurance agents and human resource professionals with the tools and information they need to receive advanced education in medical tourism as more insurance companies and employers implement medical tourism and more patients travel globally for care. This knowledge provides designees with information that is invaluable to their company, and essential to career development.
Anita Medhekar, a CMTP graduate, Indian by origin, teaches economics at the Central Queensland University in Australia. She is also involved in research in applied economics related to developing international trade, health and tourism. Her interests as a researcher are also in the area of global trade in healthcare services/ medical tourism from different perspectives: trade in healthcare, public-private partnerships, governments role in developing medical tourism business, healthcare policy, healthcare quality and marketing perspective.
The Medical Tourism Magazine had the opportunity to ask her why?
“Since the last decade or more, I always get a health check up done in India at a state-ofthe art medical facility/ hospital, which has highly skilled medical professionals who provide internationally accredited healthcare. In-spite of having private health insurance in Australia, with a long waiting period, I visit India for healthcare, as one can see a specialist straight away. Hence, I developed an interest in the topic of medical travel particularly in the case of India and developing countries, and started researching in thisarea from an economics, tourism, international trade and marketing perspective. I have been on the mailing list of MTA and decided to do the course online to further enhance my knowledge on medical tourism, and wanted to learn now from MTA experts. Hopefully, one day I will join the industry or be part of it in some way in the near future, as I would like to contribute to this industry either as an educator, or as a consultant to a medical-tourism facilitator or a hospital engaged in treating foreign patient.“
Having a medical tourism education has opened the door to new opportunities.
“Professionally having a CMTP designation has provided me all the essential information needed to build a successful business model for a medical tourism facilitator. Personally, it was an opportunity to get the scholarship and also to further my knowledge from a practitioners and industry perspective on the global business of medical tourism.”
Ms. Medhekar’s key takeaways from the course are:
- Build a successful business model
- Most important role of the medical tourism facilitator
- Be informed about costing, legal, regulatory accreditation issue
- Provide a positive customer experience from the beginning to end to the patient, because they put a lot of trust in you from the time they make the first call/e-mail until the post surgery care and follow up with them after the medical tourist home regarding their well-being.
Ms. Medhekar believes that taking the CMTP course is essential to being a part of the medical tourism industry. “It is essential for any tourism mediator / facilitator to have this CMTP certification and regularly update their knowledge. This is important to not only build a successful business model but to keep up with the global competition, changing political and economic environment and healthcare policies and regulatory and ethical issues in the various countries. It is also beneficial in the way of learning to provide a positive customer experience.”
Ms. Medhekar would recommend this course to others in the medical tourism industry.
“I would encourage all medical tourism operators / facilitators including key private corporate hospitals engaged in the business of treating foreign medical patients to provide this training to their medical and non medical staff, if they want to be a successful global player in the business of trade in health care services, and learn not only to network with accredited healthcare providers, but also to be able to grow their business. It is an excellent course and I have learned how giving attentionto detail step by step, one can not only build a successful business model but also provide a positive healthcare/medical travel experience to foreign patients.”
