We are only several months away from the MTAs annual World Medical Tourism and Global Healthcare Congress.� Every year the MTA congress has grown significantly almost doubling in size.� This year it should be bigger and better than ever.�� We are aiming for up to 2000 attendees this year with our theme off Progress in Motion focusing on how the industry is moving forward in a positive direction.�� We are bringing in completely new speakers and new advanced sessions and workshops.� We also are creating dedicated times for general sessions dedicated times for networking meetings and dedicated times for exhibiting thereby minimizing any conflicts between sessions workshops and networking meetings.� We have upgraded our networking software and made many changes so that this years conference is even more successful than before.This year we added a VIP Buyers of healthcare program where we will cover certain travel costs for up to 200 buyers of healthcare including insurers employers agents and governments who otherwise may not have been able to fund their trip to the conference.� This is going to mean there are going to be a lot of prequalified buyers at the conference this year!We have added this year a Global Health Insurance conference that focuses on multinational employers global health insurance companies travel insurers and expatriate healthcare companies.�� As technology facilitates the world moving to global platforms healthcare does the same and we will be bringing in the leaders in providing health insurance from around the world to this years congress.��� This years congress will also feature a Sustainable Healthcare and Hospital Development conference and incorporating the growth of healthcare facilities being developed around the world and healthcare facilities going green.� Many new healthcare projects are incorporating elements of medical tourism into them.In this issue we have a focus on US healthcare reform and its positive effect on the growth of medical tourism from the US.� Everyone in the medical tourism industry is excited about how healthcare reform will grow the US medical tourism marketplace.� The US is not the only country involved in healthcare reform.� Many countries in the world are going through their own healthcare reform and we are organizing a the second Ministerial Global Healthcare Reform Summit this where Ministers of Health Tourism & Finance from all six continents will discuss the healthcare challenges they are facing in their own country.I am truly excited about the amazing speakers we have lined up this year and I am looking forward to seeing both old faces and new faces at this years conference in Los Angeles.
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.
