Certifying medical travel agents

Global Healthcare Accreditation (GHA) is now offering a certification programme for medical travel agents.

Medical travel agents have for many years played an important role as intermediaries between patients and healthcare providers. For many patients, the agent is the main motivator or reason why a patient chooses a specific destination provider.

But in most countries medical travel agencies are unregulated, so it is not always easy for patients to distinguish between one with experience and high-quality partnerships versus another that may have an impressive website but little experience or worse, is not focused on the patient’s best interests.

The GHA’s Medical Travel Facilitator Certification focuses on validating the capacity of medical tourism agency companies to provide appropriate services to clients that enhance safety and patient experience along the entire medical travel patient journey as appropriate to the company’s business model.

Their services include providing information about the medical provider, handling travel logistics, and ensuring a smooth care journey.

The Medical Travel Facilitator Certification is conducted online, includes access to training, and evaluates an agent across 15 key competencies, including business ethics, sustainability and quality improvement, financial transparency, client services, oversight of contracts and agreements, and risk management, which underline a company’s capacity to deliver quality services.