Healthcare Travel Exhibition to discuss hospital accreditation links to medical tourism

Having international accreditation is seen by many as an important asset in any hospital's ability to attract medical tourists.

Joint Commission International (JCI) offers hospitals the opportunity to meet American standards. However, Dr. Derick Pasternak, JCI's Middle East Managing Director stated that although a factor, medical tourism isn't a major consideration for healthcare providers looking to become accredited.

"[Medical tourism] is an appealing reason, but by no means the reason why hospitals want to become accredited," he said. "Hospitals who aren't looking to be targeted for medical tourism have also applied for accreditation and achieved it," he added.

Pasternak did admit that accreditation might sway a health traveller to a certain hospital, but indicated that there were more important issues involved.

"For medical tourists it's the diploma that's the important thing, but for most of the other things that drive hospitals to the accreditation process it's not really the diploma, and these hospitals recognise that," he said. "The majority of hospitals are not targets of medical tourism. There's a larger number looking to become accredited because they value the process they go through because it eventually becomes part of their routine management," he added.

It's this practice of introducing standardised management protocols in hospitals that Pasternak believes is the driving force behind hospitals going through the accreditation process. Moreover its putting these protocols into practice, rather than the certification itself that will determine whether a hospital will become successful.

"There's a couple of reasons why it's important for hospitals to be accredited, but there's even more reasons for hospitals to comply with standards whether or not they're accredited because the issue is really whether or not the health system that ensures the quality continues to improve," he said. "They have systems in place for problems that occur. It's the process they follow that's more important than accreditation," he added.

Simon Page, Director of Life Science Division at IIR Middle East said that accreditation will be one of many issues discussed that relates to the medical tourism industry.

"Health tourism has become a global phenomenon worth an estimated $50 billion annually. In saying that, the potential growth is much, much bigger. To tap into it there are many issues that are arising quickly that must be tackled," he said. "That's why the healthcare travel event has become so crucial because hospitals, policy makers, insurers and everyone else involved in the industry are meeting to discuss all of these things," he added.

Ultimately patient safety comes first regardless whether a hospital is accredited or not, but it's through accreditation that improvements are being seen in hospitals.

"We are seeing an improvement in quality. We have some data that show that results have improved in hospitals that have been accredited," Pasternak said. "We've witnessed fewer complications, improved patient satisfaction and we've witnessed better systems that improve the cost of providing care," he added.

This improving situation is set to attract an ever increasing number of medical tourists to accredited hospitals in countries across the globe.