Attracting Patients Is Not Enough in Health Tourism: Who Manages the Journey?

In 2025, Türkiye provided healthcare services to approximately 1.4 million international patients and generated more than USD 3 billion in health tourism revenue. These figures demonstrate the country’s capacity and global appeal in health tourism. Yet behind every number is a person arriving from another country, speaking a different language, and carrying distinct expectations and healthcare needs.

An international patient’s journey often begins with an online search. Social media, a call centre, a health tourism facilitator, a hospital coordinator, an interpreter, a physician, a transfer company, a hotel, the finance unit and the post-treatment follow-up team then enter the process. Many institutions and individuals are involved. Yet one fundamental question often remains unanswered: Who manages the patient’s entire journey from beginning to end?

Everyone may be performing their own task. The health tourism facilitator finds the patient, the transfer company collects them from the airport, the hospital completes the registration, the physician provides the treatment and the hotel arranges the accommodation. Yet when these services are not connected, they do not create a successful healthcare journey from the patient’s perspective. To the patient, they are not separate services. There is one journey, one experience and one relationship of trust.

How many people must a patient tell the same story to?

During the first conversation, the international patient explains their condition and expectations to the health tourism facilitator. They may then have to repeat the same information to the call-centre agent, hospital coordinator, interpreter, nurse and physician. Medical reports are sent through a messaging application. Passport details remain in an email. The treatment quotation is communicated through another channel. Flight and hotel information is followed by different people, while the physician’s assessment sits in the hospital’s own system. When the patient arrives in Türkiye, they may discover that the programme has changed, that the hospital team does not have the same information as the person they first contacted, or that the proposed service differs from the treatment that will actually be provided. Even when the clinical care is successful, such inconsistencies damage trust in the institution.

The problem is not usually a lack of effort or competence among employees. It is the fragmentation of information and responsibility across people and institutions. In healthcare, the most vulnerable moments are not confined to operations or medical procedures. The periods in which a patient moves from one professional to another, from one institution to another, or from hospital to home also carry significant risks. The World Health Organization describes transitions of care as a set of actions designed to ensure the coordination and continuity of healthcare. In health tourism, these transitions are even more complex because the patient changes not only institutions, but also country, language, health system, regulatory environment, culture and means of communication.

Health tourism is not a sales process

Many organisations operating in health tourism still manage the patient journey as though it were a sales funnel. An advertisement is placed, a prospective patient is found, the enquiry is sent to a call centre, a quotation is provided and the process is considered complete once payment is received. Healthcare, however, is not an ordinary product. The patient is not simply purchasing a procedure; they are entrusting an institution with their health, their body and, in some cases, their life. Success in health tourism therefore cannot be measured merely by bringing a patient to Türkiye or collecting payment. The patient must be properly informed, matched with the right healthcare provider and physician, have their medical file assessed in full, travel under a safe plan, receive coordinated treatment and remain under appropriate follow-up after returning home. Acquiring the patient is only the beginning of the journey. Value is created by managing the entire process safely and without interruption.

The greatest risks lie in the gaps between services

Many elements of a health tourism journey may be delivered successfully. The flight lands on time. The transfer vehicle is waiting at the airport. The hotel booking is confirmed. The hospital is modern, the physician experienced and the operation successful. The overall patient experience can still end badly because many failures in health tourism arise not within individual services, but at the points where one service hands over to another. Medical reports may not reach the physician in time; an assessment may be made from photographs alone; the scope of the quotation may be unclear; current medications may not be recorded; the interpreter may lack clinical terminology; or the discharge plan may not be shared with the transfer team. If a patient does not know whom to call when a complication occurs, if the hospital and facilitator are waiting for information from each other, or if clinical questions are being answered by non-clinical personnel, there is a serious accountability gap at the centre of the system. Preventing these gaps is itself a core dimension of quality in health tourism.

The facilitator matters, but it is not the clinical authority

Health tourism facilitators are important stakeholders in the ecosystem. They play an essential role in reaching patients, establishing initial contact, identifying an appropriate healthcare provider and organising accommodation, transport, transfers, interpreting and travel. Their role, however, must not be confused with the responsibilities of the healthcare provider and the physician. A facilitator can organise the patient’s healthcare journey, but cannot diagnose, decide on treatment or perform a clinical risk assessment. A price quotation and a medical treatment plan must not be treated as interchangeable.

The proposal presented to the patient should be based on an assessment by an authorised physician, and the scope, alternatives, possible risks and post-treatment requirements should be explained clearly. Equally, a hospital should not hand the entire organisation over to the facilitator and assume that its relationship with the patient is limited to the period of treatment.

The facilitator should be accountable for organisation, the healthcare provider for the service system and the physician for clinical decisions. Above them, however, there must be a shared journey-management structure that connects the whole process.

The ‘designated officer’ in the regulation is an important starting point

The Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health, published on 26 April 2025, introduced important provisions in this area. It requires healthcare providers to establish an international health tourism unit responsible for coordinating admission, registration, diagnosis, treatment, billing, discharge, interpreting and relations with health tourism facilitators. It also requires a staff member from this unit to be designated for each international patient and recorded on the HealthTürkiye Portal. Facilitators must also maintain an infrastructure capable of responding to calls in at least two foreign languages on a 24/7 basis. These are valuable steps towards ownership of the patient journey. Yet appointing a designated officer is not enough. If that person cannot access the physician’s assessment, the current treatment plan, payment information, transfer programme and follow-up schedule, they may remain little more than a telephone coordinator. A genuine journey manager must be able to access information, communicate with decision-makers, escalate problems to the relevant units and follow the case through to resolution. The patient needs more than a named contact; they need a system with clearly defined authority and accountability.

One point of contact, one file and one current source of information

Having one accessible contact person gives an international patient confidence. The system, however, must not depend on one individual. The patient’s entire process should not disappear when that person is on leave, changes role or leaves the organisation. The journey therefore needs to be managed through an institutional digital infrastructure. Identity and contact details, medical history, current medicines, test results, physician assessments, treatment plans, quotations, consent documents, travel and accommodation information, appointment dates and post-treatment follow-up records should be held in a secure file accessible to authorised users. The patient then no longer has to repeat the same story at every stage. The physician sees the latest clinical information, the coordinator the current schedule, the finance unit the approved quotation, and the transfer team only the logistical information required for its task. Not everyone sees the same information, but everyone sees the accurate and current information they need.

European Union rules on cross-border healthcare also recognise patients’ ability to access their medical records remotely, or at least to receive a copy, as an important right. They further provide for patients who receive treatment across a border to have access to necessary medical follow-up in their home country. This approach shows that health data is not simply an archive confined to the hospital; it is a fundamental part of continuity of care.

Responsibilities must be clearly defined

No single institution can perform every task in health tourism. A strong system requires multiple stakeholders to work together, but collaboration must not mean blurred accountability. The facilitator should manage patient communication and organisation. The healthcare provider should ensure clinical safety and institutional coordination. The physician should make diagnostic, treatment and follow-up decisions. The interpreter should communicate accurately without offering clinical opinions. Transfer and accommodation providers should meet the quality standards relevant to their services. The digital platform should move data securely, prevent unauthorised access and record the actions taken. The scope of cooperation with healthcare professionals in the patient’s home country should also be agreed in advance. Every stakeholder should understand their role, yet no one should be able to leave the patient outside the system by saying, ‘This is not my responsibility.’ At each stage, it should be clear who is responsible, who approves, who supports and who must be informed. A predefined escalation and response plan is particularly important for medical emergencies, changes to the treatment plan, additional costs, delayed flights and suspected complications.

Success cannot be measured by patient numbers alone

Health tourism organisations usually measure performance through patient volumes, treatment revenue, conversion rates and market share by country. These indicators matter, but they do not explain the quality of the journey. Organisations should also measure how quickly the first enquiry is answered, how many hours or days pass before a physician reviews the medical file, whether the delivered procedure differs from the approved proposal and how many different people the patient must contact. Waiting times, missing-document rates, transfer failures, complaint-resolution times, the time taken to deliver medical records, attendance at follow-up consultations and response speed when complications arise should also be tracked. It is not enough to ask about satisfaction only on the day of discharge. Organisations that can identify where trust was lost and where information was interrupted can improve their services in a lasting way. We cannot manage a journey that we do not measure.

Türkiye can establish an ‘international patient journey standard’

Türkiye has strong hospitals, experienced physicians, advanced technology, extensive transport links and a substantial hospitality infrastructure. The next step is to bring these strengths together within a shared patient-journey model. A digital journey record can begin before treatment and continue through the post-treatment period for every international patient. Within this model, the patient can reach verified healthcare providers and physicians, have medical information assessed securely, receive a transparent description of the service, be assigned a responsible journey manager and follow appointments, payments, transfers, treatment and follow-up in their own language. Hospitals, physicians, facilitators and other service providers can work on the same infrastructure within their respective permissions. Artificial intelligence can help detect missing documents, support multilingual communication, issue appointment reminders, identify delays and route high-risk reports to the clinical team. Clinical decisions and responsibility for patient safety, however, must remain with healthcare professionals. What is needed is not another piece of software, but shared operating rules, defined responsibilities, secure data exchange, measurable service times and an institutional management model that takes responsibility for the patient’s entire journey.

The issue before Türkiye is not simply to reach more international patients. It is to determine clearly who manages the entire process from the patient’s first enquiry until their return home. Every patient should have an authorised contact, a current file shared across institutions, clearly defined responsibilities and a response plan that works when a problem arises. Without these elements, many separate services may be delivered, but they do not form a coherent healthcare journey. International patients should not have to understand an organisation chart. For them, the system exists only if they can reach the right person when they need help.

If, at any point in the journey, a patient has to ask, ‘Who should I call now?’, that journey is not yet being managed.