Acceptance is a beginning
In general CRM logic, an accepted quote is the last step of the funnel. In medical tourism it starts a new and more fragile process: the patient is travelling from another country, dates have to align, hospital and surgeon schedules have to be booked, payment has to be collected.
Mistakes at this stage cost more than mistakes during the sale, because the patient is now a customer with high expectations. That is why operations deserves its own discipline rather than being treated as sales admin.
Handover without information loss
The transition from sales to operations is where knowledge most often evaporates. The context a consultant built over weeks gets summarised in two sentences, and the patient ends up explaining themselves again.
The right design is handover through the record: when all messages, quotes and notes live on one patient file, the coordinator reads the history themselves. Only four things need to be called out explicitly at handover:
- What the patient is sensitive about (price, pain, duration, privacy).
- Any promises made — every commitment not written in the quote.
- Companion status and language needs.
- Any exception agreed in the payment plan.
Internal handover uses mentions and comments; the process runs in Meto Operation.
The operations checklist
A repeatable list per patient, each item dated and owned:
| When | Item |
|---|---|
| Acceptance day | Deposit collected, dates confirmed, hospital provisionally booked |
| -14 days | Passport/visa check, flight details, companion details |
| -7 days | Accommodation confirmed, transfer planned, interpreter assigned |
| -2 days | Confirmation call, pre-op tests and instructions |
| Arrival | Meet and greet, hotel check-in, next-day schedule |
| Procedure day | Hospital transfer, consent forms, accompaniment |
| Discharge | Medication and care instructions, follow-up appointment, balance |
| Departure | Transfer, flight confirmation, aftercare contact details |
Each row opens as a reminder; documents are stored with tags.
Managing cancellation risk
The window between acceptance and arrival is where cancellation risk accumulates. Three practices reduce it:
- Take a deposit. Even a token pre-payment makes the decision concrete and measurably lowers cancellations.
- Shorten the window. The longer the gap, the more doubt grows; offer the nearest suitable date.
- Stay in contact while they wait. Silence feeds hesitation. A brief weekly update — preparation steps, a message from the surgeon, hotel details — keeps the relationship warm.
Payments and settlement
The financial side belongs on the record too: deposit taken, outstanding balance, exchange rate, amount owed to the partner hospital and any agency commission. The pre-accounting module ties these to the patient; ledger tracking shows the balance per partner.
Commission structures are covered separately in commission tracking.