Tutte le strade portano a Roma per il turismo medico – (All Roads Lead to Rome for Medical Tourism)
I recently spent three days with the Universita Campus Bio Medico di Roma, performing a preliminary market and operational assessment and strategic planning consultation. The polyclinic recently was accredited as an academic medical center by the Joint Commission International in preparation of their anticipated entry into medical tourism.
In a nutshell, what I discovered was an enterprise well on its way to a solid, well-executed medical tourism market entry. For the most part, they were already operating by many best practices, conducting business with integrity and on mission, and developing a dedicated and energetic team of administrators, support staff, nurses and physician leaders, led by a charismatic and competent General Manager with excellent leadership skills. His background in banking and investment is rare for that role. He understands entrepreneurial risk, activity-based costs, and enables growth and professional development a matrix organizational structure that manages cross functional teams who work to cut across traditional vertical business units. In my career, I’ve encountered a few of these hospital managers in Thailand (2), Malaysia (3), Singapore (1), India (2), a few in the USA, Kiev (1), Greece (2), and now him in Italy. To me, that speaks volumes when I take into account how many hospital executive I’ve come to know in more than 30 years in health care and health tourism management consulting.
In reviewing Universita Campus Bio Medico di Roma’s plans and preparations, I was impressed by their grasp of operating costs and how they used this data to fine tune pricing of their services, taking into account their integrated health delivery system, value proposition, preliminary target market identification, and the building blocks for their health tourism products. This leadership, involvement, and level of clinical integration, healthcare engineering and technology, coupled with the impressive quality of physicians working at the Universita Campus Bio Medico di Roma will produce and bring to market a differentiated and unique medical tourism product rarely seen in South Central Europe and the Mediterranean region.
They are well on their way to developing the right human resources, work tools, policies, procedures, contracting business rules and trading partnerships, and a marketing mix to succeed on a short time line. They won’t require any extra certification plaques on walls to succeed, either.
What pleased me the most was that they chose not to imitate near market medical tourism competitors. Instead, they have begun to prepare to pursue a Blue Ocean Strategy for medical tourism business. They’ve decided to diminish the importance of near market competitors, and instead create a trustable ″blue ocean″ brand of uncontested market space in the unique services they offer and those in which they excel. These strategic moves will help them to leapfrog the competition despite their late start, and create value for the polyclinic, its customers, and its employees while unlocking new demand and making the competition irrelevant.
I’m not going to spoil the ending by revealing next steps, because they are not mine to share. However, it’s going to be a pleasure to write my professional analysis and report of the mission findings and recommendations.
