We build your International Patient Department from scratch, with an owner, processes and a dashboard installed
For hospitals, clinics and medical groups that want to receive international patients and today lack the structure to sustain it. It begins by appointing an owner and ends with a department that has its own income statement.
Five criteria. If you meet fewer than three, your route is to build.
- There is a person holding the title of international patient officer
- All international leads are in a single record
- Response, quotations and closes are measured weekly
- International prices are published or in a price list
- There were more than 10 international patients in the last 12 months
This is not a rhetorical question: it is the same criterion we use to classify each institution in the diagnosis. An institution that believed it was ready and discovers it does not meet three of these five moves on to build. That is a finding, not a failure, and it saves you the money you were about to invest in demand generation.
The demand already exists. What does not exist is who sustains it.
A Latin American hospital with good medical quality and a price competitive against the United States already has potential demand. The enquiry arrives: through Instagram, through the website form, through a relative living in Miami, through a doctor who referred someone.
What does not arrive is the timely response, the qualification of the case, the well-assembled quotation and the sustained follow-up.
An international patient does not buy a procedure. They buy the certainty that they can travel to another country, hand over their body to a team they do not know, and return home without anything going wrong. That certainty is built with operations, not with advertising.
- The enquiry arrives on a Friday afternoon and is answered on Monday
- A price is sent by WhatsApp, with no payment plan or conditions
- The patient asks something medical and the answer takes days, because it depends on a specialist having a free moment
- The patient stops replying and no one knows whether it was because of price, fear, or because another clinic answered first
- No one can say how many international patients there were last quarter or how much they billed
None of the five is solved with more advertising.
Ten components. All of them are installed and in use.
A person with the title, scope and authority over the international patient, with a written job description and the explicit definition of what is removed from their current workload. Without this, none of the other nine holds.
Organisational chart, written roles, a weekly review ritual with management, and international revenue separated in the income statement from the first month.
Hiring profiles, real language and availability requirements, and the coverage scheme to respond seven days a week.
A service standard signed by management: what the institution undertakes to do, in how long and with what quality. With an escalation protocol and time agreements with the medical areas.
Documented step by step, with who acts, in how long, with what script and with what document. Design priority on steps 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7, where the loss is concentrated.
A single entry channel, with all the others redirecting to it. A CRM with the lead lifecycle configured, templates, video calls and reminder flows.
An international price list in dollars per procedure. Three to five packages with what they include and what they do not. A formal quotation format, with payment plan and conditions.
An ideal institution and patient profile, and the first growth engine: one market per procedure per channel, with a measured indicator.
A weekly dashboard with enquiries, response time in minutes, qualification, quotations, closes and ticket. With the first measurement taken before day 30.
A plan for 30 days, 90 days, 6 and 12 months, with three actions per horizon, each with an owner, the necessary resource and a compliance indicator.
Four horizons, each with a verifiable deliverable
The programme lasts 12 months. The end point is a department with its own income statement, and that is the time it takes to get there.
Owner and channel
Owner appointed and in post. Single active entry channel. Service standard signed and communicated to the team.
Qualify and quote
Qualification script, tele-guidance and a formal quotation in under 24 hours, in use. A KPI dashboard with its first measurement.
First engine
First acquisition engine switched on and an international package on sale.
Own P&L
A department with its own income statement and measured contribution.
The 90-day milestone is the checkpoint, not the end. If by that date qualification, quotation in under 24 hours and the dashboard are not working, you do not move on to the next horizon until it is corrected. A verifiable milestone is not "improve the response": it is "100 percent of enquiries answered in under 20 minutes for four consecutive weeks, with a record".
Would you rather try the method first? See the two-day workshop
From improvisation to measurable operation
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| No one owns the international patient | A person with a title, scope and authority, and a date on which they took over |
| The first response takes as long as it takes | A human response in under 20 minutes, seven days, measured in minutes |
| Loose prices are sent by message | A formal quotation in under 24 hours, with a payment plan and conditions |
| Follow-up happens if the patient insists | A scheduled cadence at 3, 7 and 14 days, with a recorded reason if it does not advance |
| Leads live in personal chats | All of them in a single record, viewable by anyone on the team |
| No one knows how many enquiries arrived | A weekly dashboard with enquiries, response, quotations, closes and ticket |
| International revenue is lost in the general total | International revenue separated in the income statement |
| Contact ends at discharge | Contact at 7 and 30 days, with a request for a testimonial |
This route is not for your institution if
- You seek results in under 30 days. The first verifiable milestone is at 90.
- You expect a third party to run the department for you. We build it and deliver it working with your people.
- There is no one in management with the authority to appoint the owner and remove their workload. Without that decision, the project stops in the first week.
- The institution has not yet resolved its local operation. If the domestic patient has a bad experience, the international one will have it worse and will also tell it in another language.
Frequently asked questions about this route
What is the investment?
The minimum is the equivalent of USD 10,000 per year. The amount depends on the number of sites, the procedures included and whether the institution requires on-site implementation. It is defined after the Assessment, with a written scope.
Who from the institution must take part?
The general director or clinic leader, who is the one who appoints the owner and signs the service standard. The appointed owner. And access to at least one medical leader per procedure included.
What if we have already hired a marketing agency?
There is no conflict. An agency with a well-built department behind it performs far better. We coordinate with it so that the demand it generates lands in a process that knows how to receive it.
Does the department end up depending on you?
No. That is the success criterion. If at the end the department cannot operate without us, the work is not done.
The first step is not to hire. It is to measure.
Before defining scope or investment, we carry out the International Readiness Assessment, which includes sending a real international enquiry to your institution and measuring what happened. An eight-dimension radar, a score out of 40, the main leak quantified and a 90-day roadmap, in 10 business days.