For those seeking to attract US patients overseas, everyone in the medical tourism industry is super excited about healthcare reform in the US and how it has the potential to increase the number of patients leaving the US for medical tourism.
Some Americans are still very surprised that many of the meaningful elements of healthcare reform that would have lowered healthcare costs in the US were never implemented, and instead the provisions that were included may have the effect of significantly increasing health insurance costs and potentially trigger healthcare costs to spiral out of control in the US.
More insurers, employers and agents are more interested in medical tourism than before because they realize they need to implement some cost saving solution to meet the rising health insurance and healthcare costs. This is why this year one of the themes of our conference September 22-24th, 2010 in Los Angeles is healthcare reform.
The US is not the only country going through healthcare reform, although the publicity the media has given it would lead you to believe so. Most of the countries around the world are going through their own kind of healthcare reform, including the launching of compulsory health insurance in many countries. Many countries worldwide are facing their own healthcare crises.
Within our conference in Los Angeles we are organizing a Global Healthcare Reform Ministerial Summit, www.healthcarereformsummit.com, which will be a special meeting open to Ministries of Health and Tourism from around the world, where Ministers can share experiences, solutions and also collaborate with those in their region about healthcare reform experiences.
Ministers around the globe have been invited to participate and the summit will be divided by geographic regions to allow for more intimate discussions based upon opportunities and challenges presented by geographic situation.
This year we have also added a Global Health Insurance Conference within the Medical Tourism and Global Healthcare Conference. This international health insurance conference will bring together top international insurance companies, medical assistance companies, multi-national employers and travel insurance companies who will mingle with all our attendees.
Along with our buyers of healthcare, our specially designed VIP program will sponsor up to 200 buyers of healthcare making your experience even more exciting than last year by bringing together stakeholders and the best high level attendees and buyers of healthcare from around the world. We look forward to your participation
About the Author
Renée-Marie Stephano is a Founder and President of the Medical Tourism Association, also known as MTA, the first international non-profit trade association for the medical tourism industry. Ms. Stephano also serves as general counsel for the MTA and is Editor of the Medical Tourism Magazine.
Ms. Stephano received her Juris Doctorate degree in Law in Pennsylvania. She has a background in international marketing and health law and then went on to open her own law firm, spending six years serving as general counsel for a US national healthcare administrator which was the first US healthcare administrator to implement medical tourism into both self-funded and fully insured health plans in the United States.
Ms. Stephano works full time for the Medical Tourism Association and is considered an expert in medical tourism. In her role at the Medical Tourism Association, Ms. Stephano helps countries and hospitals create strategic marketing plans and helps identify target markets. She has helped many countries and hospitals achieve their goals of attracting foreign patients and international insurance companies. Ms. Stephano works with global health care providers to maintain transparency with respect to quality of care as they increase their flow of patients and she also works with medical travel facilitators to establish best practices to ultimately ensure patient safety. She may be reached at Renee@medicaltourismassociation.com
