Our interview with InterMed Global CEO Julie Munro continues below. Read part 1.

HDJ- What types of healthcare job positions does the medical tourism industry have available?

Julie- A medical concierge is just one of several types of jobs that are emerging as medical tourism grows out of the mom-and-pop era.  The medical travel concierge helps the patient plan the medical journey. This could be working for a medical travel agency, a health insurance company, a hospital or a large corporation. We hire concierges for Cosmetic Surgery Travel.

She (or he) is someone who works directly with a patient to help that patient find a solution to his or her healthcare problem. This includes not only pre-surgery preparations but may include helping with travel arrangements and visas, coordinating between the home town physician and the abroad specialist.

A medical travel concierge might be found working with the insurance industry or with large corporations who offer a medical tourism option in a health insurance plan. The medical travel concierge will work directly with people who are taking up the travel option for their healthcare, and she will help guide them and manage their medical journey. This can be as a staff person or as a consultant or advisor.

HDJ- Do they travel with the patient?

Julie- Sometimes a medical travel concierge might travel to a medical destination with the patient, either to be a companion or to act in her capacity as a nurse.

Hospitals all around the world employ a medical concierge or an international patient coordinator who helps take care of patients who have traveled from afar (domestically or internationally). This may involve family communications, cultural sensitivities and religious considerations, even explaining legal and ethical issues.

HDJ- Is there another role that a medical concierge provides?

Julie- A medical concierge who also supervises and manages the traveling patient’s care coordination at the medical destination is considered a care manager or international patient advisor. She has more responsibility than the typical medical concierge, and probably has had additional training in care management of international patients. She’ll probably be working closely with a foreign medical concierge in Thailand, India, Korea, Turkey, or Mexico. The international patient advisor is an insider who knows what all the medical destinations offer, which hospitals are among the best, and which surgeons are at the top of their game. It’s her responsibility to make sure the traveling international patient is assured of getting top quality care at a reasonable cost, and with good outcomes.

HDJ- Is there certification available?

Julie- The Medical Travel Quality Alliance is the only organization that offers certification programs for the medical travel concierge and the international patient advisor. Certification offers access to working in or sending patients to many of the world’s best hospitals, solving health matters for individuals, exploring and researching the latest research and medical treatments offered around the world, as well as providing assurance to traveling patients that their care management is in the best hands.

HDJ- Is the pay competitive compared to other healthcare industry jobs?

Julie- Pay is competitive if you have international travel or care management experience or if you are certified. The more networked you are with doctors locally and abroad, with insurers, employers and travel agencies, the more valuable your services are as a medical concierge.

Recently we met with Julie Munro, CEO of InterMed Global to chat about medical tourism. InterMed Global provides consultation, management and training in medical travel and health tourism. This is part one of our interview with her.

HDJ- What is medical tourism?

JULIE- Medical tourism refers to the rapidly-growing practice of patients traveling across international borders to obtain health care. A decade ago, most of the activity was affluent people from developing countries seeking medical care in the high specialty hospitals in the US (like Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins) and the west.

In the past decade this has been reversed. It’s become a movement of American patients, Canadians, Australians, Brits and others spending their own money to find alternatives to expensive medical procedures at home. This includes all kinds of minor and major elective procedures like cosmetic surgery, gastric bypass surgery, heart bypass surgery, even organ transplantation and neurosurgery. There’s even a list of Top 10 World’s Best Hospitals for Medical Tourists. (mtqua.org)

People are traveling because the treatment they need at home costs too much, or they have to wait months or years for it, or it’s an experimental or research treatment, or it’s not available here but it is in other countries. An example is the Birmingham hip resurfacing procedure, a procedure that doesn’t destroy your hip socket, and gives you much better mobility than a hip replacement. It’s now available in the US but people could go to India and other countries to get it several years before it was FDA approved. Stem cell therapy is another example. There are many countries that now offer a number of treatments using stem cells, from helping joints recover quicker, to treating peripheral artery disease, and they’re trying it on Parkinson’s and other nerve disorders.

HDJ-Why did you decide on medical tourism as a career path?

JULIE- I have lived and worked in Asia for much of the past 30 years, and I know firsthand the excellent treatment and care available in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Healthcare today is at a critical crossroads, not only in the US but in all the western countries. Everyone agrees the new Obama plan does very little to reduce or control costs. Considering the aging population, the enormous demands on all aspects of healthcare by retiring baby boomers, huge costs of medicines, and new treatments for disease that require tremendous expenditures on equipment, technology and drugs, people are going to be forced to look anywhere and everywhere to get the care they need at a decent cost and in a timely manner.

The recession has hit healthcare very hard, and every country’s healthcare costs are starting to weigh heavily on its citizens. Whether public system (Canada, UK, France etc.) or private (US), this is not a problem that’s going to go away any time soon. We’ll be living with the impact of mounting costs of healthcare for decades to come.

Stay tuned next week for part 2!