- Pramod Goel
- Sep 25, 2023
Once Walt Disney said, “Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.”
During the new COVID era, patients continue to seek medical care from top experts or cheaper options. With continued lockdowns, travel restrictions, and overall uncertainties it is essential to re-imagine the globalized healthcare system. The value proposition and scope of the medical travel could exponentially expand when the supply chain of the industry integrates technologies with new innovative processes.
“Hybrid Experience” is the future of the medical industry. It is essential for medical providers to adopt it and further innovate their practice.
Boost Patient Experience with Innovative Hybrid Strategies
In medical tourism, patients are particularly vulnerable due to the challenges they face for seeking care abroad. The situation has become more complicated for them due to the global Coronavirus pandemic. In such a scenario, it is extremely important to boost patient experience positively. This is where you have to think innovatively and implement hybrid medical tourism experience enabled by technology.
Digital Health is the New Normal
It is time to rethink to create new processes and solutions for accelerating innovations. Now, patients want 'control' so you need to provide them an experience that is personalized and transparent. That is how the integration of innovative technology can enable new globalized healthcare.
Being the global leader of the medical tourism industry, PlacidWay is bringing global digital transformation that will improve patient experience and engagement digitally during the complete process of Pre, During and Post continuum of care.
Re-Imagine Patient Experience with Innovative Hybrid Medical Tourism
PlacidWay’s hybrid medical tourism solution can improve the patient experience with four key strategies, which are:
- Marketing & Education Focus
- Remote Online Consultation
- Treatments Excellence
- Aftercare – Continuum of Care
Marketing and Education
Right Information and proper marketing play a big role to boost patient experience. A patient will never book a flight and travel abroad for treatment without gathering enough information to convince him to take that action. You have to educate patients about the treatments you provide, facilities you provide, modern features your clinic is enabled with, hygiene and safety at your clinic, the experience of your doctors and staff, packages you provide, etc. Once the patients get access to this vital information, it helps them to decide to book a treatment at your clinic.
Now, just having the right information to educate the patients is not enough. You have to market information using the right channels so that it reaches your target customers, which gradually results in patient acquisition.
That is why PlacidWay focuses on the importance of digital health in medical marketing and education with various key solutions such as:
- Data analytics to establish demand patterns
- Responsive/mobile website/PWAs
- Social media marketing
- Video marketing
- Email marketing
- Online communities
- Search Engine Optimization
- Demographics based market segmentation
- Engaging case studies
- Credential marketing
- Webinars/Facebook Live/Zoom
- Personal marketing
- Content management system
- Knowledge management
- Content distribution
Online Consultation- Telehealth Care Access
As more providers are hopping onto the technology, communication strategies must deliver a positive patient experience. Online consultation is becoming more common nowadays as patients are unable to get access to care by traveling abroad. This is also a good scope for the providers to generate revenue by offering online remote consultation.
The patients will be happy to directly interact with an expert doctor abroad and get healthcare guidance for a certain fee. Also, the patients who wanted a second opinion from an expert doctor can get assistance with remote online consultation service. In this way, you can boost transparency and build the loyalty of your brand as the patient gets the benefit of consulting the expert without traveling abroad.
Treatment – Local Partner / International Destination
The next stage after online consultation is the treatment itself. If the patient decides to wait till the international travel restrictions for medical treatment are lifted (also, if it is feasible health-wise), you can inform what benefits you are going to provide if he chooses your clinic for treatment. The patient gets to know from you directly if you are offering any discount on the procedure, waiving off the cancellation charge, introducing a new package, or what safety measures are being taken at your healthcare facility. The patient gets a clear picture of how the treatment will take place at your clinic when the restrictions will be lifted.
You should also consider the patients who need immediate medical care and cannot wait till things get normal to travel abroad. In that case, you can partner with some local clinics and doctors in the areas where you get maximum potential customers. When such a patient reaches you for consultation, you can recommend a local partner to get the required urgent tests and pre-treatment. This also improves patient experience and establishes trust among the patient and provider, which can lead to a long-term relationship
Aftercare – Continuum of Care
In the medical tourism industry what generally happens now is that a relationship between a patient and a provider lasts only till the treatment procedure. Once the treatment is over and the patient reaches home, the provider is not concerned any further.
The hybrid experience aims to bridge this gap and explore a very potential area to boost the patient experience, which is ‘aftercare’. Now, the patients can stay connected and get guidance from the doctor who treated him/her abroad without flying to the international clinic. The clinic can integrate technology like video chat for aftercare consultation. The patients can consult with the experts online using such features and get follow-up and post-treatment advice.
As the healthcare industry is changing and patients are looking for new experience, PlacidWay is integrating the Medical Travel innovation to help the providers improve patient experience and develop new revenue resources. Technology is the enabler of this hybrid system, which helps the providers to establish a continuum of care that completes the cycle of education & marketing, patient acquisition, and treatment & aftercare. Use PlacidWay’s omnichannel communication technologies like video consultation, online chat, email messages, phone calls, SMS messaging, Chatbots, Artificial Intelligence and business intelligence to boost transparent communications and drive innovation.
For more details on how to survive COVID-19 crisis and strategize future health tourism plans with hybrid experience, contact PlacidWay at:
