the global insider - euro-center · a south african travel agency, conﬁrms the phenomenon. “we...

Euro-Center Newsle�er Vol.02 Issue 01

Euro Center Holding

Krizikova 36a

186 00 Prague 8

Czech Republic

Phone: (+420) 221 860 330

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.euro-center.com

The Global Insider March 2015

Irena Žáčková page 1

Chief Financial Officer Euro-Center Holding

Tanja Wijnen pages 3-4

Business Development and Network Manager

Euro-Center Holding

Healthy China 2020

Happy New Year!

Story Telling Compe��on

Daily Network Adventures

Global Financial Teamwork

Personnel Announcement

Ronald Groenendijk page 2

General Manager Euro-Center USA

Why Pa�ents are Billed in the USA

Paying un�l it Hurts

Featured Euro-Centers

Personnel Announcement In order to further develop the business opportuni�es in Africa, support the general Euro-Center commercial ac�vi�es, as well as addressing the future network needs of the Euro-Center Group, Tanja Wijnen has taken on a new challenge as Business Development and Network Manager. We are also happy to announce that Hanne Bodil Smit has been pro-moted to General Manager for the Cape Town office. Having been the office manager as well as temporary general manager during Tanja Wijnen’s maternity leaves, she is already familiar with this posi�on.

Euro-Center Manager Conference 2014

company affiliated to our main shareholder. They are now using Euro-Center Thailand’s 24/7 opera�on as their first point of con-tact. Other internal business growth has come from another shareholder following the addi�on of Euro-Center Madrid to the Euro-Center family. We are excited about servicing them on this new level.

Third party business is also pending and we are nego�a�ng contracts with a number of insurance and assistance companies world wide. Our increased capabili�es through Euro-Center Madrid, a highly regarded alarm company, will most definitely also prove beneficial in posi�oning us as an attrac�ve business partner.

I look forward to working with you all this year, developing our company together.

Global Financial Teamwork

The financials of 2014 are finalised and we are proud to announce a posi�ve year-end result. Although the financial climate caused some of our clients to struggle with unexpected lower turnover, we concluded another successful year with increased efficiency and a�en�on to cost saving.

Since I became the CFO, I have been impressed with our global team spirit and I believe our finance savvy local Euro-Center staff contributed to this result as they treat their en��es as if it was their own business.

Our key focus for 2015 is to increase revenue growth and we are already on track. From our internal corporate group, we have a�racted new business from a

Vladimir Alidis page 5

Regional General Manager

Euro-Center Asia

Irena Žáčková

Chief Financial Officer


One of my favorite things about working for Euro-Center in New York is that we are in a city and country that constantly changes. Inevitably, new challenges arise, demanding new or be�er solu�ons. In 2015, our focus is on turn around �me for all our services in order to meet and exceed the expecta�ons of our policy holders and customers. Also, healthcare reform is now in full swing and of course the side effects, as described in this newsle�er, are both good and bad but usually unexpected. Finally, we are more deeply involved in the non-US areas that we service such as Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and possibly Cuba soon. There is never a dull moment, we say, and I hope this newslet-ter shows you why.

There are many reasons that can lead to the billing of a pa�ent by a hospital or collec�on agency. Here are three common situa�ons and explana�ons to how we solve them.

Billing the pa�ent typically occurs if the pa�ent’s account is classified as “Self-Pay.”

It can be difficult to get the status changed to reflect that the pa�ent does have insurance.Bills get sent to the pa�ent’s home address and inevitably, they forward the bills to Euro-Center to resolve the situa�on.

Even a�er receiving insurance informa�on, providers and some�mes collec�on agencies will con�nue to send bills to the pa�ent.

Facili�es in tourist areas like Florida, Las Vegas, Colorado and California work with large interna�onal collec�on agencies such as Global Recovery, OVAG, BDM and IFPS.

This extra layer creates addi�onal problems because they o�en have incomplete and incorrect insurance informa�on, resul�ng in them billing the pa�ent. Once Euro-Center is involved, it takes �me for them to send the proper US billing and medical report, causing delays.

The agencies’ involvement is the result of

Ronald Groenendijk

Euro-Center USA

hospitals dealing with difficult payers and they generally make no excep�ons to this process.

The Dominican Republic is one of the areas serviced

by Euro-Center USA

Denials or lengthy coverage decision-making process

If the insurance takes too long to determine coverage on a case or it is first denied, but subsequently approved, the pa�ent’s status becomes “Self-Pay” and the pa�ent gets billed directly. It is very difficult to reverse this status and to avoid billing to the pa�ent once either situa�on occurs.

Most importantly, if we can make sure - in coopera�on with the pa�ent - that the providers have the right informa�on in their system, this will reduce the billing and the delays.

In all situa�ons, we strongly encourage pa�ents to submit copies of their bills to Euro-Center as soon as they are received. This allows us to promptly contact the pro-vider and quickly resolve any outstanding bills.

Marie Nunez—Senior Client Services Specialist

There are so many misconcep�ons and excuses that are connected to ‘Obamacare’ that people some�mes forget that it is a set of laws, not an insurance policy for purchase.In the five years since the law was passed, many things have changed but not as an�cipated. The debate is s�ll raging strongly. As evidence of the ongoing conten�on, the Supreme Court will hear a case this year that aims to deny ci�zens of states without its own on-line health insur-ance to exchange the right to subsidies if they buy from the federal website. S�ll, Congressional representa�ves have realized that people are rela�vely happy with their insurance op�ons, so they have stopped equa�ng it with “Doomsday”.

Also, while the official name is the ACA or “Affordable Care Act”, healthcare has be-come far from affordable for some. Yes, millions more people have coverage

through the expansion of the government-sponsored Medicaid for low-income groups, as well as through the availability of subsidies via the health insurance ex-changes. But out-of-pocket expenses like deduc�bles are higher than ever. One of the posi�ves is the growing awareness of costs, leading to a downward trend in overall healthcare spending as pa�ents become more cost-conscious. This is also illustrated in many publica�ons such as “America’s Bi�er Pill“ and the Facebook page “Paying Till it Hurts”. Those are �tles we can all relate to as we serve our customers while mi�ga�ng the costs.

A major impact can be seen in the market for both healthcare providers and insurance companies, which have both become more consolidated and narrow, giving them more control over their pricing. The fact that many doctors have

now become hospital employees can have both a posi�ve and a nega�ve effect on the prices. We an�cipate many more changes on the horizon and stand ready to do our best to service our customers.

General Manager

“Healthcare has become far from affordable

for some”


Euro-Center Holding

Norwegian territory Bouvet Island to its 52 countries. “We ini�ally had a chuckle in the office,” says Hanne Smit, General Manager of Euro-Center Cape Town. “Wikipedia describes the island as an uninhabited, sub Antarc�c volcanic island. We established that Norway has an expedi�on there every 15 years.” But they were quickly put into ac�on.“Within one month we had a query from one of our group insurances to set up a preven�ve evacua�on network and we also got a query from a third party insur-ance asking if we could do the same from Tristan de Cunha and possibly organise a decompression chamber, as they have tourists doing recrea�onal diving there.” On closer inspec�on it turned out that Tristan de Cunha is an island en-route to Bouvet Island and officially the most remote inhabited island in the world. Fortunately, the single permanent resident on the island is a GP, and he is now part of the Euro-Center network. And the decompression chamber? The client was told that, of course, it could be organised.

Karin Wernström, owner of African Tails, a South African travel agency, confirms the phenomenon. “We see lodges opening up in absolute rural Africa like in the jungle of Congo Brazzaville and in the Ethiopian mountains. People have hec�c lives and they want to experience pris�ne and natural se�ngs far from Western civilisa�ons. These trips are pricy and the tourists are not just backpackers. "General Manager Maria Berkova at Euro-Center Russia agrees: “ We have no�ced an increase of ethnic tourism near the Ural Montains. People are interested in the Buddhist culture there, do horse riding and enjoy the beau�ful nature. But it is extremely far from any medical centre and we have had to find a local

Tanja Wijnen

Business Development and

Network Manager

and regional solu�on, as accidents frequently happen. We work with the Russian medical system, which in principle is good, but in prac�ce it can be a challenge and you have to understand how it works.”

Erik Lidgren, who is responsible for La�n America and the Antarc�c also highlights the need to simply apply common sense. When they were tasked with making an evacua�on plan from the Antarc�ca, they immediately contacted the Argen�nian military, which has a naval base there. “It is too far to fly from the southern �p of South America, and we obviously would need far reaching helicopters.”

Tourists do not have to be in the jungle or on an iceberg to challenge the assistance companies. Some�mes tourists are lulled into thinking that something is ordinary just because it is common locally. Meanwhile, the insurance company might view the same as “extreme sports”. Bodil Fricke from Euro-Center Sydney and Hanne Smit recog-nise this. “Hang out in the backpacker quar-ters of Sydney or Cape Town, and you will see that they all offer canyoning day trips to “Suicide Gorge”, Tigersnake Canyon etc”. Hanne Smit supplements: “Accidents easily happen when you a�empt a 10 meter jump into a murky rock pool. The only other way out is with helicopter”.

Some�mes the challenge is less drama�c, but equally solu�ons driven. When Russian tourists started favouring the Erzurum Mountains in Turkey, Euro -Center Turkey established that the ski-li� company had agreements with one par�cular clinic. The clinic itself was good, but no one spoke any Russian or English. General Manager Ayce Birercin explains that they solved this by crea�ng a mul�-lingual medical checklist enabling the Turkish doctors and European alarm company to communicate without confusion.

Daily Network Adventures

You are assigned a new challenge. “Please urgently set up a network for this expatriate group.” You have never heard of the place. You zoom in on Google Earth and find sand. Hopeful, you zoom out. More desert, and perhaps a dirt track. The client is wai�ng for an answer - and by the end of the day you know the place be�er than your neighbor-hood.

Staff at assistance companies can nod in acknowledgement. What used to be infrequent queries are now daily quests for solu�ons and our staff’s capabili�es are highlighted like never before. Local know-ledge, can-do a�tude, crea�veness, linguis-�c skills and cultural understanding are as essen�al as ever and fundamental for keep-ing ahead of the compe��on.

Only a few years back we could mostly rely on stereotypes. A tourist was someone who went to Phuket or Mallorca to sweat it out on the beach. Now, he wants a story to tell. Expatriates went to capital ci�es. But now, the financial climate has brought third world opportuni�es to the a�en�on of corporates, and expatriates turn up everywhere imaginable. Our world map is also do�ed with poli�cal hotspots like never before and someone - with travel insurance – will be out there dealing with it. Network management is the core of Euro-Center business, and we have therefore asked our managers around the globe to provide their views and experiences on handling this.

Adventurous Travellers

The Ural Mountains have become a tourist hotspot in

Western Russia

Most remaining blank spots on the Euro-Center map were assigned recently and the Cape Town office subsequently added the


A 2013 report from the African Development Bank states that Africa’s economy is growing faster than any other con�nent, and the Interna�onal Monetary Fund also predicts a good outlook 2015 for Asia. This is in contrastto the financial climate in western countries and Euro-Centers are increasingly se�ng upspecialized networks for expatriate groups in developing countries.

In Asia opportuni�es include mining in Laos, ship building in rural Vietnam and notably an array of developments in Myanmar. “With an improved poli�cal situa�on we see a lot of new corporates there,” explains Regional General Manager for Asia Vladimir Alidis. Business and network requests are also sprou�ng in order parts of the world. “Kazakhstan and Northern Iraq are surprising candidates”, says Maria Berkova. Hanne Smit also points out that expatriates are moving back into South Sudan. O�en networks can be pre-empted by following the news as it was the case with the discovery of natural resources in Mozambique and Equatorial Guinea, or the increasing demand for green energy solu�ons in South Africa.

A need for an extensive individualised network some�mes arises when a client signs

up with an atypical policy holder group. Recently, Euro-Center Sydney created such a network all over rural Oceania. “Some policy holders are isolated in highly complex areas in rural Papa New Guinea and on the Solomon Islands,” Bodil Fricke explains. Ma�ers are made addi�onally complex with a high prevalence of malaria and typhoid. “But we are in close coopera�on with the limited available clinics, air evacua�on op�ons and the insurance,” she says.

Some�mes when networks are successfully up and running, unrest breaks out or the explora�on of natural resources are no longer profitable. “Oil is too cheap now, and oil companies in Brazil are sending their expatriates home,” observes Erik Lidgren. Islamists have also played havoc with expatriate life in Nigeria, Algeria and Chad. “When things then stabilizes again, we pick up where we le� and start all over,” says

Expatriates on the move

List the 20 most dangerous places in the world, and it is guaranteed that Euro-Center services insurances with policy holders in all of them. They are corporate employees, humanitarian workers or some�mes just policy holders who get caught up in a quickly developing situa�on.

“We find that planned networks and evacua�on plans in such areas are actually not that difficult to make due to the lim-ited op�ons available,” explains Jan Kovacs, network responsible for South East Asia at Euro-Center Thailand. “However, the availability or accessibility of a given clinic or landing strip can change from day to day. And this is where crea�vity, local knowledge and unique provider contacts really kicks in.” As a consequence, Euro-Center staff has to be news savvy. When ISIS became a world-wide reality Euro-Center Turkey already serviced humanitarian workers on the Turkish/Syrian border. “From one day to the other, we also had to re-address how we work in Eastern Ukraine,” explains Maria Berkova. When the Ebola crisis was at its high in West Africa, the Africa office received update queries on a daily basis.

The Euro-Centers who are responsible for a region with failed states and war zones, have to establish provider agreements with security companies and consultants working in this field. “We do have some fascina�ng provider mee�ngs,” laughs Hanne Smit. “Some happily update us on their latest Somali pirate hostage nego�a-�on over the cappuccino.” These highly professional people are needed and she advises that they have been called at �mes due to their different type of Africa know-how and experience that is un-paralleled.

While expatriates sta�oned in such areasare quite capable and courageous, tourists

have to be assisted in another way.

Isla Margarita is part of Venezuela and the capital city Caracas is one of the world’s most complex and dangerous ci�es. How-ever, Euro-Center Brazil will evacuate to Caracas if it is needed. “It is a ba�le from beginning to end. We check, re-check and check again,” says Erik Lidgren. Those travelling or living in these hot-spots some�mes find themselves needing non-medical evacua�on and the insurances mayask for out of the ordinary assistance. “We can always find an air evacua�on company able to fly to the nearest possible safe dirt landing strip and our contacts may have insights that are not available in the me-dia,” says Hanne Smit and confirms that her office assisted on non-medical evacua-�ons three �mes in the last two years.

Hanne Smit, General Manager at Euro-Center Cape Town.

What’s next?

The world is becoming a smaller place, and surely a worldwide network can be finalized once and for all? It would not seem so. The world is constantly evolving. As soon as one Euro-Center has won the status of having found the most crea�ve assistance solu�on yet, a new story un-folds at another Euro-Center. The buck stops with us and our local, driven staff know that there is no other op�on than to conclude the challenge with the best possi-ble outcome.

Assistance coordinators in Cape Town


Euro-Center China is pleased to have this opportunity to say ”Happy New Year” again to all of you. We hope that this recently commenced new year of the goat will be prosperous for you.

In 2015 our focus is to improve the quality of our customer services and also develop our already extensive medical provider net-work. We will also follow the upcoming changes in the Chinese Healthcare system in rela�on to the governmental program Healthy China 2020, and keep you informed.

Happy New Year! Euro-Center China

Vladimir Alidis

Regional General Manager - Asia Close to midnight on February 19th, all China burst into a noisy and scenic firework. If you want to sleep, buy earplugs or be�er to join the crowds of people in the streets for this joyful night! 2015 is the year of the Wooden Goat, which is considered to be a nice, calm and useful animal. The previous celebra�on of this animal happened 50 years ago. A lot has changed in China since then but tradi�ons have stayed the same: Wear something red, clean your house properly on the last day of the old year, do not wash or cut your hair on New Years Eve or on the first day of the year, se�le your debts, - and do not talk about ghosts. Possibly, very good advice. Per-haps give it a try. What you definitely should not do during this fes�ve �me is to travel.

Healthy China 2020

Chinese astrology

China’s healthcare reform is the important part of this program. Among others it includes massive renova�on of county public hospitals, improvement of medica�ons and medical equipment supply and a training program for 1.9 million medical professionals to improve quality of healthcare in towns and villages. The program also aims to strengthen the primary care system, especially general prac�ce ins�tu�ons as it claims to gain at least 5000 doctors as qualified GP’s. The reform is focused on the public health-care system. It means that the impact on the private sector is not obvious. However, the Chinese government will encourage foreign private investment to open interna�onal

The Chinese government recently declared the pursuit of “Healthy China 2020,” a program to provide universal healthcare for the people of China by 2020, together with revised policies in nutri�on, agricul-ture, food and social marke�ng. It focuses on the primary healthcare improvement, chronic disease preven�on, and promo�ng be�er lifestyle choices. It targets urban, populous areas that are “heavily influenced by bad consequence of globaliza�on” and points out that auto-ma�c “use of other countries’ healthcare system examples is misleading and China will follow its own path.”

Hundreds of millions of people in China are migra�ng to join their families and friends for the New Year celebra�on. The week following the Chinese New Year is called the Spring Fes�val. This is an wonderfully calm and relaxing �me in China. A �me of love and joy.

Euro-Center China wishes all our clients a very Happy New Year!

hospitals and clinics. This might s�mulate the compe��on and push private hospitals having a monopoly posi�on to decrease their some�mes extreme prices.

A 16 year old male policy holder travels in Kimberley, rural South Africa. He had cut his finger, which required a few and an�bio�c treatment. Subsequently, he began s�tchessuffering from lack of appe�te and felt unwell. A�er a week, the trea�ng doctor recommended hospital admission as he was ge�ng weaker by the day. It was suspected that he had a stomach ulcer caused by the an�bio�cs.

We got a call from the young man. He stu�ered through his words in English explaining

what happened to him and was scared of poten�al hospitalisa�on in South Africa. We offered him to con�nue in Danish and he dissolved into tears, grateful for this mutual language. In a long chat I gave him feedback according to his policy, reassuring him that in general all private hospitals in South Africa are of the same standard as back home in li�le town Skjern, Denmark.

The policy holder was feeling very far away from his parents and I therefore offered to call his mother back home in Skjern. Again, he broke into tears grateful that we could assist. We called Mom back home in Skjern. She was very happy for our involvement and especially as she had been very worried. ”Maybe I am over-reac�ng a bit…but are there any risks of my son ge�ng Ebola?” she asked. With confidence we could assure her that the cut in the finger would not lead to Ebola, and definitely not in Kimberly, which is very far away from any Ebola affected areas in Africa.

We monitored the case for a few days and followed up with the policy holder and his mother a�er discharge.

the global insider - euro-center · a south african travel agency, conﬁrms the phenomenon. “we...

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