OUR MISSION IS: To instill Integrity, Standards and Trust to Medical Tourism and Global HealthCARE services.

TO ACHIEVE THIS, WE RELY ON THREE TENETS: Advocacy, Aftercare and Accountability…

Advocacy

As a Patient Advocate, you always act in the best interest of your patient. They have entrusted you with their pocketbook AND their life and you take this responsibility seriously. You are their voice, their champion and their representative, regardless who “pays” for your services.

Aftercare

Clinical studies have shown that sterile wound care and adherence to post-operative instructions is a key component in reducing complications and infections, speeding healing and avoiding additional costs. This can include assistance with bandage changes by a trained nurse or other clinical professional that visits the patient in their hotel room at regular intervals between doctor visits or other therapies the doctor may indicate for the patient’s optimal recovery.

Accountability

Means you take responsibility for the quality of the entire service chain in your patient’s experience. You are beholden to the patient as a licensed contractor is to the homeowner hiring him to remodel her home. Well-defined processes help you set and meet expectations and curb unexpected or “hidden costs” once they arrive. You provide oversight to ensure that each participant in your patient’s experience follow ethical and responsible practices.

What the IMTCC Is NOT…

WE ARE NOT…

an advertising or “lead capture/generation” site for medical tourism providers or “facilitators.” Advertising is simply the public promotion of something to increase interest in it. Enough of this has already been done.

WE ARE

here to establish trust and achieve growth for our members through marketing our unique perspective, transparent and trustworthy information and innovative care models. Unlike advertising, marketing’s essence and success requires understanding your customer’s needs and developing a plan to meet those needs, bringing providers and consumers together in a mutually beneficial way.

WE ARE NOT

here to capture patients,

WE ARE

here to care for patients, believing that if we advocate for them rather than our industry, we cannot help but capture the patient’s attention, innovate care models and earn their trust.

WE ARE NOT

a “Trade Association” or even a typical Chamber of Commerce.

WE ARE

a Professional Association of Medical Tourism Services Providers, a unique, hybrid organization; a blending of the goals of a Chamber with the values of a Better Business Bureau (BBB). A Chamber supports community involvement and leadership, reliable information sources and networking and collaboration opportunities. A BBB promotes standards, integrity and values, Best Practices, training and mentoring, oversight and compliance and performance reporting procedures.

WE ARE NOT

Medical Tourism Facilitators (MTFs), medical travel agents, case managers, concierge services, destination managers, hospital or doctor referral agents, salespersons, surgery brokers or commissioned marketing representatives.

WE ARE

Global Patient Advocates (GPAs), skilled doctors and medical providers, Patient Advocate Liaisons (PALs), Medical Aftercare and Concierge Support Services (MACSS) and various but vital ancillary service providers (hotels, pharmacies, laboratories, nurses, etc). Regardless of the titles, every member understands they are each contributing, individually and collectively, to the patient’s outcome and experience. And each has a firm belief in the appeal and power in the rise of global healthcare options and a desire to make “medical tourism” a model for healthcare delivery rather than a risky last resort.

WE ARE NOT

here to promote medical tourism.

WE ARE

here to encourage the adoption of Patient Advocacy on a global scale and innovate the current broken model of healthcare delivery today by instilling 3 fundamental and essential tenets to the medical experience: Advocacy, Aftercare and Accountability. The IMTCC is the voice of the consumer/patient, before, during and after their medical experience. Our members understand and are committed to the significance of the “customer experience” in a healthcare delivery model.

We are innovators because we believe our tenets, Advocacy, Aftercare and accountability should NOT be unique to medical tourism patients but to ALL patients… no matter where they live, no matter where they are from and no matter where they receive care.

We want patients to recognize that they can obtain advocacy and support at ANY time, at any point in their “medical experience,” whenever they find they need the representation and help that the IMTCC can give… regardless of whether or not they have chosen an IMTCC member provider.

WE ARE NOT

going to promote or endorse the current and popular industry income model based on commissions, referral fees and otherwise non-transparent (and long declared unethical and even illegal) models that inherently favor the provider-agent (MTF) relationship rather than permitting and fostering a transparent and ethical representation of the patient’s needs, values and best interests. Masking negating accountability and transparent feedback on medical providers due to the financial and contractual arrangement between MTF and provider/benefactor.

We believe that our member providers perform an invaluable and professional service as patient representatives and experience planners and overseers. Their expertise, commitment to their patient client and training deems that they should be compensated independently and transparently for it as an attorney or other type of advocate or representative is.

WE ARE

The IMTCC and its members not only embrace patient advocacy but seek to promote its understanding and adoption on a global scale. Just as there is no equivalent of the word “Concierge” in many languages (a good part of what we do), just as many do not contain the word “advocate” outside of the legal profession. But in North America, the UK and Australia, certification for Professional Patient Advocacy is finally taking shape.

The IMTCC is aligned with these organizations and our goals are the same. Our global members are the visionaries that understand the transformational power that patient advocacy will have and are just as excited about its adoption and promotion where they live.

Our medical providers know and respect the vital role that the IMTCC and patient advocacy plays in their own success as well as that of their patient.

Our team

Founder & CXO

Christina deMoraes, BA, GPA

Christina has been a passionate Patient Advocate and Medical Concierge as well as a pioneer in the Medical Tourism industry since 2002. She formed her first company, MedNetBrazil Concierge Services, in 2002, after her own plastic reconstructive surgeries there following bariatric surgery in 2001 and a loss of 175 pounds. In just the first few years while living in Brazil, she hand-held close to 300 patients through the entire process and created medically responsible protocols and standards of practice that ensured patients’ safety, support and satisfaction and spared them thousands of dollars from complicated recoveries, longer stays and re-admissions. These protocols and standards are the basis for the Chamber's three tenets: Advocacy, Aftercare and Accountability.

She has always been attracted to foreign languages and cultures, living abroad in 3 countries and receiving her BA in French from MIIS (Monterey Institute of International Studies in California). She has spent more than 10 years as a cultural, medical, social and business liaison marrying the needs of each to achieve mutual benefit, create trust, improve results and implant ethics in “medical tourism facilitating.”

Her expertise and unique experience have been highlighted and appeared in four Medical Tourism guidebooks and over the years, she has been asked to present at various International Medical Tourism Conferences about managing the "Patient Experience," has also consulted for medical providers, hospitals, accommodating hotels, other medical travel facilitators as well as those interested in the trends of the industry in general.

Christina is perhaps, NOT the typical "expert" you will encounter in the medical tourism industry. We say this because her expertise comes from one-on-one patient/doctor contact IN Brazil, overseeing every aspect of their treatment and recovery. She pioneered the Medical Concierge concept "from the ground up" and created workflows for patients and Concierge staff to guarantee process consistency. Fostering trust and instilling integrity, along with knowing how to create an excellent "Patient Experience" and helping to guarantee optimal results through safety, all with cultural values in mind, is the key to Medical Tourism really coming into its full potential as a vital and high-touch industry.