TMCs Overlook Med Travel Opportunities

This is part of a series about TMCs, corporate travel agents and medical travel.

The leverage that TMCs have with travel vendors would be a huge asset for companies that cover medical travel for their employees, but so far few TMCS are involved in medical travel.

It’s not that TMC expertise isn’t needed.

Medical travelers have special needs, including flexibility in travel dates, specific air seating, and other requirements.

Traveler needs
The list of traveler needs based on specific medical conditions and treatments is long and complex, said Geoff Moss of Planet Hospital, a vendor that coordinates medical care with travel and other ancillary services for employers.

Travelers who have had knees or joints replaced have very different needs from patients with cardiac surgery, but both need special attention. And both present very different challenges from patients who need medical evacuation because of a critical injury or illness.

Rebooking is a common issue for medical travel, said Moss, vice president for corporate affairs and business development. Timing on medical procedures is less certain than, say, for business meetings. Post-surgical rehabilitation may take an extra few days, or it may move faster than expected.

The kind of airline relationships provided by TMCs could make all the difference in changing bookings and waiving fees.

Ignored by the big players
Managing vendor relationships is standard operating procedure for travel departments. But not when it comes to medical travel.

When contacted by Travel Market Report, both the Global Business Travel Association and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives said they weren’t familiar with medical travel or possible travel department involvement.

The three largest TMCs – American Express, Carlson Wagonlit, and BCD Travel – don’t talk about medical travel either.

TMC sees ‘a great niche’
One TMC that is embracing medical travel is Minneapolis-based CTS/American Express. The TMC handles travel for what Julie Tearny, director of account management, called a “major medical center” that has contracts with employers around the country.

The unnamed medical center schedules and coordinates medical care and uses CTS to arrange travel from the patient’s home to hospital and back again.

“It’s a great niche for us,” Tearny said. “We book people every day from places I’ve never heard of. What you learn in medical travel is that diseases don’t take holidays and don’t care where you are.

“The bigger medical travel gets, the more important we become to the traveler, the employer, and the medical center. This is anything but a straight corporate account. You have to think out of the box all of the time.”

Coming and going
Arranging medical travel does take special knowledge.

Moss cited the example of an employee traveling for a knee replacement. The employee might be fine seated in economy class on his or her way to surgery. But coming home, that same employee needs a business or first class seat to keep the new knee at the proper angle. And the seat must be on a specific side of the aircraft to protect the surgery site.

Next time: How CTS handles medical travel.

See related story, “Attn. Biz Agents: Get Med Travel on Your Radar,” March 1, 2012.