Patients travel for different reasons, including special treatments, new procedure opportunities, high rates in their own country, or getting away from friends. For medical tourism, it is often difficult to make and negotiate international payments and payments in large amounts. Many medical tourists pay for the services they get without involving insurance companies. But in this stressful period, some patients prefer to get help from insurance companies and keep themselves away from this stress. Patients can not be sure about the ways of settling the international payments. The exchange rate rises often and it is always confusing. Patients can never be fully convinced of the accuracy of the payment. Their dissatisfaction with payment period may have a negative impact on their health. For healthcare institutions, reconciliation issues in international payments can also be complicated and time-consuming. Since healthcare enterprises want to attract more medical tourists, they should take into account the impact of the management of international payments on their patients and operations. There are a few things that should be considered regarding patients’ payments, if your institution already serves a large number of international patients or it is planning to involve more patients in the coming years.
Seek for support. Because while making payments in large amounts with patients from various countries and time zones, the number and repitition of payment related inquiries and requests rise. Most hospitals aren’t organized to deal with these inquiries all day long. They likewise would prefer not to deal with this.
Payment comfort. Patients will search for more helpful, efficient, and convenient ways for making payments which drive these exchanges to web means because of the capacity to transfer funds fast and securely and can be controlled by means of sms or email.
Common or local payment alternatives. Offering international patients familiar payment choices in their currency by using web experience can be serious differentiator in their experiences. The options which offer discounted rates compared to those offered by banks in the patients’ country will probably be more pleasing.
Agreement and reliability. In the condition of increasing terrorism threat and focusing on financing sources, transparency and compliance will be the most important sides. Hospitals will be required fast confirmation of sources, providing detailed transaction reports for all payments.
Despite the payment is the last part to think in the medical tourism field, these above mentioned aspects become significant and necessary for both the payers and the payees as medical travel becomes more common day by day.
Since healthcare organizations aim to attract more international patients, they need to eliminate such payment problems by providing them with a stress-free and localized method of payment that they can easily settle in back office.
Shahsuvar Hajizada
Director
