Enhancing Profits with Travel Health Care
Adding Travel health services to a clinic can increase a practice’s income and enhance its client base. If the population you see includes international travelers, you are missing the boat if you are not attending to travelers’ health needs. Where should you begin if you want to add travel health services?
Services Provided by Travel Health Care Providers
- Gathering travelers’ health and immunization history plus details of the planned trip
- Customizing a risk-reduction plan for each patient that includes vaccines, prescriptions, and consciousness-raising about behavioral risks, drawing on available resources
- Educating travelers about how to stay healthy during travel and what to do if they become ill
- Charting everything and giving travelers an immunization record and appropriate handouts
Start With What Your Office Already Has
Your clinics already have office setups, reception and waiting areas, examination rooms, plus medical and support staff. There is a refrigerator and the capability to store and administer vaccines. Emergency medications and training are part of a clinic’s scope of current practice, and in today’s health environment, computershare obviously an integral part of the office setup.
With a few additions, your clinic can easily accommodate the function of a travel clinic. You will need some new policies/procedures and charting forms or modified online medical record pages to accommodate the new functions.
Educate the Staff Members Who Will Provide the Care
The body of knowledge in the travel medicine field is very interesting but large. Travel medicine consultations should be based on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control standards of care which are published online at www.cdc.gov. The CDC publishes The Yellow Book Health Information for International Travel, an essential resource for anyone providing pre-travel healthcare. It is available online or in hard copy. The CDC site provides destination recommendations and requirements for the countries your travelers plan to visit. NAOHPUniversity’s TravelHealth101 (www.naohp-university.com/courses/travel-health101) can provide convenient online training and CME/CNE credits which helps to ensure all staff members are on the same page knowledge-wise. A well-educated staff can comfortably assess each traveler’s needs in order to provide safe and thorough care.
Some of the Next Steps After Staff Training
- Obtain International Certificate Of Vaccination or Prophylaxis For travelers.
- Access the Vaccine Information Statements to review with patients.
- Review refrigerator reliability and install thermometers.
- Order a starting supply of vaccines.
View details about vaccines on the CDC website.
Apply to the local public health department for a Yellow Fever stamp in the name of one of your MDs.
- Decide upon a consultation fee for travel health services that are in line with the fees your clinic charges for other longer consultations. Consider reduced fees for couples or groups of travelers who visit the clinic together. A small administration charge can be added to each vaccine charge. Most travel clinics require patients to pay on the day they receive the services in cash or with a credit card, and patients then submit claims to their health insurance companies. You may estimate costs and fold these into contracts.
- Consider keeping travel clinic billing separate from billing for other care services. If your clinic has contracts with medical insurers, you will need to set up the travel clinic as a separate business with its own tax ID#. Otherwise, you will have to accept insurance discounts for the vaccinations.
- The Travel Health101.net TravelerVideo program can help you teach travelers while saving staff time.
- Streamline travel healthcare by talking to traveler groups.
- Notify your current clients of your new offering and include travel health services in your marketing materials.
Some Travel Medicine Facts – Just a Sampling
- Travelers may come to the clinic for another health concern and mention travel plans, so listen well.
- The number 1 statistical risk for travelers is accidents, so traveler education is essential. Number 2 is diarrhea!
- Antimalarial prescriptions are tailored to the patient’s health status and destinations.
- Some vaccines are protective for life, and some need boosters. Travelers need to be seen before each trip so all needs are met.
- Travelers can be “preloaded” with the necessary vaccines when short-notice trips might be planned.
- Travelers may require follow-up vaccines after they return from a trip. ←
