So international patients – that’s a good name for non-nationals or foreign patients! – are an important element of your patient base and understanding their healthcare needs and difficulties is pivotal to retaining this group of patients.I was fortunate to have been the Chief Medical Officer of some 10 International Clincs so have a good insight into the problems that are presented.
Firtsly the ability to easily access your clinic day or night, for routine care or for emergencies, is important. Many patients will be IT literate and welcome the convenience of on-line appointment systems whilst others will expect professional language skills in well trained reception staff.
It is important to realise the heightened anxieties that these patients have. Being unwell in a foreign country and often not understanding how healthcare is delivered, and how to communicate with healthcare providers and professionals creates a degree of anxiety which needs to be recognised. This anxiety is always increased with ill children and pregnant women. Reception staff as the firstpoint of contact need to be able to broker this anxiety and relax patients. Failure to achieve this can often result in disatisfaction which can often overflow into consultations making the realisation of a successful outcome difficult to achieve. One of the jobs of reception staff is to prepare patients for an effecticve consultation and this is important when appointments are running late so a protocol on how to deal with this is important.
Physicians also need to adapt their consultation skills to relate to patients from different cultures, and who often approach medical staff in differing ways. Taking a few minutes to allow patients to talk about their past medical history, and that of their families, their anxieties about health and their history of preventative health care will allow the development of an effective communication style as well as facilitating an adult to adult relationship.
Consultation skills need to communicate a clear outcome in terms of potential diagnosis, further tests, and follow-up. Finally a sense, and even record, of the aptients understanding and happiness with the consultation should be sought after.
Operational efficiency not only applies to appointment systems but also embraces working with a large number of insurance companies that operate direct billing – the patient does not pay but signs off the traetment whilst the provider bills the insurance company. If this system is not efficiantly managed providers can be left with large sums of receivables. Discharge papers should be readily available for transmission to the patient’s home physician in an appropriate language.
Finally care needs to be tailored to patients own national healthcare systems – this is important both for routine preventative checks and for childrens vaccination schedules.