Medical Providers
Advice to up-and-coming Alarm Centres
in the Medical Assistance industry
Introduction
For the last couple of decades travelling in remote and unchartered parts of the world has become the chosen way of travel not only for backpackers, but also for regular thrill seekers and even senior travellers these days. At the same time, an increasing number of global business and aid work projects are taking place in remote and difficult regions with limited health infrastructure, attracting staff from international corporations and NGO organizations.
These trends have created ever tougher challenges for the insurance market and international alarm centres; how can we best keep up with globetrotting travellers and expatriates working in remote areas of the world. Finding out the best hospitals in these areas, both medically and financially, is difficult and costly. Due to lack of case experience and limited know-how about these kind of regions, many alarm centers are forced to give up and accept to having next to no information about what facilities to refer customers to, and only updating information about medical providers after the customers have already been treated. This makes it impossible to guide customers to the best available health facilities when they need it the most – when the accident has just happened.
Travelling is easy until something goes wrong. When accidents happen abroad and travellers are faced with sorting things out themselves, without access to the experience of local insight, while already battling with health issues, this is when they need all the help they can get from the insurance company.
It is this category of travellers who need our assistance the most. Rather than leaving them to their own devizes, we must make sure to have the necessary knowledge of where to refer our clients, before the customer calls for assistance.
My background
Since 1991 I have assisted global travellers for a large Scandinavian Alarm Centre; initially by handling complex medical assistance cases until the end of 1997, a time when I primarily specialized in assisting clients who needed help in remote and particularly difficult parts of the world. In 1998 I was appointed a position to create an extensive database of medical facilities and assistance providers to support the Alarm Centre’s doctors and assistance coordinators, so that they could make sure that the customers received the best available treatment locally and knew where transfer them to more advanced hospitals in the vicinity for more complex treatment.
From the very start, I have focused on the importance of our staff having access to updated information about quality of care, and the possibility to compare medical facilities in every region of the world. The more limited the access of quality care, the more important it is to have the information ready before the accident happens.
Finding the most adequate medical treatment locally is not just a matter of sending them to the best hospital you can find, but you must also make sure that they have the expertise and services necessary to provide correct and adequate treatment. This must be balanced by health facilities providing only necessary treatment, within the correct time frame, and for prices that are reasonable.
I have always had a passion for the importance of collecting adequate information, before making decisions on how to assist our customers. I am keenly aware of the risk of making snap judgement based on insufficient knowledge. Never underestimate how tricky it is to properly evaluate the quality of a hospital or the expertise of their specialists, with insufficient background knowledge of the quality of health locally and experience about local conditions.
Method
The main challenge is to pinpoint and evaluate the most suitable hospitals and assistance partners in areas where Alarm Centres have little or no case experience, which is usually time consuming and costly – but must not be ignored. Leaving our customers to fend for themselves, in these areas with poor infrastructure and insufficient quality of care, is not a sensible option. I can assist in making sure you have the best available information, basing evaluation on a range of sources, each giving vital insight to the full picture. To have complete information is not always possible, however this is far better than making do with no information at all.
Information is usually available, but demands actively monitoring the situation regularly, and collecting data when it is available. Knowing who your sources are and how old your information is, is crucial. All information about quality is very subjective and liable to change, so every source must viewed with a critical eye, which makes it important to list evaluations chronologically in time, with the understanding that information may quickly change over time.
After spending two decades of monitoring hospitals all over the world, visiting hospitals personally, incl. in Asia, Africa and Europe, I can provide essential knowledge about hospitals in every part of the world. I can pinpoint strategic medical facilities, describe what quality to expect, and what limitations and shortage may make quality of treatment vary. Using this information a doctor at Alarm Centre will be better prepared, before calling to get medical information from the treating doctors, and assistance coordinators will be much better prepared to refer customers to the most suitable hospital available (and know which more advanced hospitals exist in the nearby area and how to transfer their customers there).
This will minimize the risk of travelers ending up in the hands of inadequate or unethical doctors, and improve the chance of receiving proper and correct treatment from the start.