Abstract
The principal objective of this paper is to demonstrate the best practices in the rising trend of H2H and Medical Tourism. The concept of “Experience Economy” expedites the merging process of hospitality and hospitals: patients are also travelers now whose needs are not merely commodity type of medical care anymore but a memorable wellbeing experience. Moreover, H2H optimizes the process of realizing excellent care, which serves as the fundamental reason for tourism industry. In the section of “Best Practices in Medical Tourism, Christiana Care Way, Starwood Five Human Truths, and H2H packages in Switzerland are selected to show how patient/guest experience can be made more interactive and less transactional. Therefore, although H2H demands the considerable collaboration from all parties involved in order to ultimately present the excellent care that customers, tourists, and patients want, H2H indeed carries tremendous opportunity for hospitals, hotels, Spa, restaurants, transportation, and more.
TopGoal Of H2h: Excellent Care
What are the key components of a fond healthcare experience? When it comes to medical tourism, the success of medical care obviously is one crucial determinant. Unfortunately, the patients and customers will not credit the well-done treatment coming with unpleasant customer service as excellent source of care. Moreover, as one of the most distinctive icons in the service industry, Disney has provided a convincing list summarized by Dr. Lee in his book “If Disney Ran Your Hospital”: initiative, teamwork, empathy, courtesy, and communication (Dr. Lee, 2004). Based on the Disney model, six major factors should be considered necessary for realization of excellent care in medical care settings. To be more illustrative, the graphic model for medical care can be created as below:
Figure 1.
Dr. Lee's Disney Model on Excellent Care
Key Terms in this Chapter
Core Competency: A unique and vital expertise that an entity possesses while most its competitors do not.
Medical Tourism: An increase tendency that patients are going overseas as tourists to receive wellbeing treatments, health therapies, or medical surgeries.
Experience Practices: Implementations of focusing on creating captivating experiences rather than only completing necessary medical procedures.
Competitive advantage: An element that renders business superiority over its competitors such as a team of unique talent, a cutting-edge technology, and a special geographical location. This superiority enables the business a better chance of winning in a competition.
H2H: A rising trend that hospitals are bringing in hospitality talent to optimize customer service for their patients.
Experience Economy: A current trend of global economy that consumers are purchasing memorable experiences instead of only physical commodities.