Are you an entrepreneur looking for an emerging industry that is expanding by 25% each year? Look no further than the medical tourism industry. Medical tourism, health tourism, or medical travel are the terms with synonymous meaning and are referred to the process of travelling across borders in order to avail better health treatments in terms of quality and cost. In a broader sense, it means that people who travel from their home country to another country or when you leave your city or providence for healthcare, to receive different healthcare treatments with the intention to avail greater quality of care through modern technology along with affordability, which is, either not available in their home country or is too expensive.
www.MedicalTourismBusiness.com gets dozens of calls from new medical tourism facilitators every day, who are interested in learning tactics and methods that would help them grow their business (medical tourism facilitators coordinate medical trips for traveling patients and receives a fee for his/her services). While our primary focus is on patient lead generation, helping start-ups find their way in the industry is a reminder that we are also educators for these agencies. This is why we now offer a medical tourism facilitator certifications course.
The medical tourism industry is a fairly new one, and some facilitators get hapless outcomes from their efforts because of a lack of knowledge about what can be successfully done in-house, and what needs to be outsourced for a more efficient workflow. It is important to know the ins and outs of the business when you are an up and coming start-up, and in this spirit, we give you these few secrets to successfully starting your medical tourism agency.
1.) Go For a Home-Based Approach
To start your medical tourism business all you need is a professional setting with telephone and internet access. These are the basics to start operating, and you can find these at home. You don’t need to waste time and money on a big, fancy office, you can use that money and valuable time on lead generation, acquiring strategic partners and building your customer base, which is what you really need for success in this field.
2.) Cut Cost Smartly
The key to success in any business is cutting your costs and saving as much money as you can. Every penny counts, but this also applies to how you save and spend. Sometimes, it is smarter to spend, and cutting costs in the wrong areas can lead to more losses than gains. Think about the pros and cons of spending on outsourcing, or saving up and doing something yourself. Do a cost-benefit analysis to see if it is worth it to cut costs in certain areas.
3.) Work with Experts
While cost cutting is great, there are certain things you may just not be equipped to handle yourself and will have to outsource even as a start-up business. Things like website development, content writing, graphic design, education, lead generation, etc, are professions in themselves and are not everyone’s forte. There is a certain way to do these things that will make them effective and so you need to let the professionals handle these, otherwise they will be useless. It is sad how many medical tourism facilitators fail because potential clients did not take them seriously because of a poorly executed website or sales call.
4.) Go For Brand Affiliation
Since you are a new business, and especially if you’re working out of your residence, it is likely your clients are going to make up their minds about you through your website. In this industry, trust is the most important thing, since the client is placing their lives in your hands – literally. One important way to build this trust is through brand affiliation. You need to be certified by a reputable organization and need to be affiliated with accredited hospitals and other businesses and have their logos on your website as proof of quality and legitimacy.
5.) Hire A Mentor
Another reason a lot of your clients might not take your business seriously is due to the way you handle correspondence. If you do this in an unprofessional, ineffective, or confusing way, you will give off the vibe that you do not know your stuff, and this can be a major turn off in this industry. Patients have major concerns already and they need you to alleviate these fears, and for this you need a mentor who can give you the required industry knowledge and give you proper training to help you handle all kinds of patients.
6.) Use Protection
In this industry, it is very easy to leave yourself open and vulnerable to various attacks as there is a lot of potential for things to go wrong. For this reason you need systems in place for the protection of your business. It is important to have patient waiver forms that is a signed statement from the patient that they know and understand the risks, as well as B2B contractual agreements with partners and healthcare providers that lower your liability. Remember, this is your business, your livelihood, and it is your right as well as duty to protect it.
These six secrets are sure-fire ways to make sure your new medical tourism business is a success. MTB helps new businesses in the medical tourism industry get on their feet and thrive by not only providing training and education, but also lead generation services, contractual agreements and patient waiver forms, and even website development and SEO services to make sure every aspect of your business is covered.
