Part 1 of a multi-part article series
Step One: Form a Task Force to Establish and Direct the Work Plan
More and more hospitals are considering a go-to-market strategy for medical tourism. We can plot the trend on a map because at least weekly, we receive calls from hospital executives wanting to engage us and send our accreditation guidance team to their hospital to get them ready to be surveyed.
To begin the process of accreditation preparation, usually a task force consisting of physicians, hospital managers and a few executives, nurses, the tourism and economic development board representatives come together for a meeting at the hospital. Ideally, this meeting is facilitated by an experienced international healthcare consultant with the specific engagement to develop the work plan, documentation, and path to accreditation for healthcare facilities. This could be done quickly if the organization is ready. By ready, we mean prepared with a budget allocated to the project, and ready to get started. Depending on visa and immigration complexity and hospital readiness, we can usually have a response team in the hospital within two or three weeks. At Mercury Advisory Group, our teams consists of one physician, one nurse and one former hospital administrator. Some reside in the USA, while others reside in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, CIS, and Latin America. Our teams have prepared hospitals in more than fifteen countries, all with a 100% successful accreditation survey outcome. Which team responds is all dependent on which team is available when you call.
The task force often organizes the process of accreditation readiness, guided by the consultant. This is on account of two practical reasons: First the consultant returns back home and can remotely work with the team, but someone has to be “boots on the ground” for the day-to-day scrum stand ups, and to maintain the work plan. Also, local project management is important because each country has its unique characteristics and governance structure, and international accreditation programs actually embrace cultural sensitivity of the cultures and practices of the community in which the organization is located, not the culture from which medical tourists originate.
Many hospitals follow the international standards of the Joint Commission International (JCI), but there are other equally-suited, less costly, international healthcare quality and safety programs with standards also accredited by the International Society of Quality (ISQua). In fact, the JCI is but one of about twenty similar accrediting bodies. While it used to be true that JCI was the only one who used a tracer methodology to verify that the hospital followed its own internally developed standards, the time has come that most every accrediting body now incorporates this “reality check” into its program. Simply count on it and be prepared to pass. There’s barely a defensible reason why there should be much variation of quality standards between programs because they all essentially strive for a similar outcome: Keep the patient safe and the quality assured.
