From initial concept to outcomes measurement, Maria Todd’s “Handbook of Medical Tourism Program Development” covers intricacies involved in building framework, infrastructure, policies and procedures to develop successful medical tourism programs in the US and abroad.  The book’s target audience includes hospital administrators, health ministries, hoteliers, and government tourism and trade promotion boards. Denver, Colorado USA – Published in early December, Dr. Todd’s Handbook of Medical Tourism Program Development: Developing Globally Integrated Health Systems offers government ministries, hoteliers, spa owners and medical tourism provider networks with tips and techniques for succeeding in the industry. Todd invites readers to learn more about the techniques of globally integrated healthcare delivery, ways to improve provider skill sets, technology, infrastructure, communications, quality, safety and get new marketing ideas. She also shares her personal stories from more than 30 years in the business. She quickly goes over the philosophy behind medical tourism and its opportunities and fallacies before launching into a set of projects for her readers. The projects not only include instructions, but also some information that governments and hospital administrators might not know, such as facts, how to negotiate, why they should care about third-party reimbursement, and how the business may (or may not) involve group health and employer-sponsored health insurance programs going forward as the nascent market matures. Other recently released titles by Mercury Healthcare Advisory Group Colleagues available on amazon.com include:

• Performance-based Medicine: Creating the High-Performance Network to Optimize Managed Care Relationships, by William J. DeMarco, MA, CMC (ISBN: 978-1-4398-1288-4)
• Managed HealthCare in the New Millennium: Innovative Financial Modeling for the 21st Century, by David I. Samuels, MPA,  FHFMA (ISBN 978-1-4398-4030-6), and
• The Medical Services Professional Career Guidebook: Charting a Development Plan for Success, by Donna Goestenkors, CPMSM, (ISBN:978-1-4398-4478-6), which covers practices, procedures and requirements of medical staff credentialing and privileging professional development.
• Todd’s other recent medical tourism title, The Medical Tourism Facilitator’s Handbook, (ISBN-978-1-4398-1283-9) also just released by Productivity Press, was written for independent medical tourism facilitators, travel agents, and hospital-employed facilitator audiences.

ENT Today Examines New Frontiers: Medical tourism brings potential for big business but poses big questions Enttoday.org—More patients every year are traveling outside of the US in search of lower health bills and treatments that might be unavailable to them at home. The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions estimates that 750,000 Americans went to another country for treatment in 2007, and researchers there conclude that the industry could grow by 20 percent a year, with as many as 1.6 million US residents taking these trips by 2012. Researchers caution that exact numbers are essentially unattainable, however, because estimates are largely based on self-reported figures that can’t be verified. To continue reading click here.