3. Business Processes and Workflows

The end-to-end user journeys (the 14-stage patient journey, the per-persona flows, and the planned additive journeys) now live in their own User Journeys section, organised by lifecycle phase. This section documents the operational processes and rules that those journeys rely on: how a clinic is onboarded and managed, how payments and refunds work, and how issues are escalated.

For the journey context that frames these processes, the 14-stage patient journey is the spine: each stage has an accountable owner and a service-level target, and the processes below operationalise specific stages of it.

3.1 Clinic onboarding and management workflows

A clinic joins the network through a structured onboarding before any public listing. The clinic-side journey view (onboarding wizard through case management) is documented as Clinic: onboard to managing cases; the eligibility policy and lifecycle states below are the operational rules behind it.

flowchart TD
  A[Clinic applies / is invited] --> B[Submit accreditation: JCI or NABH]
  B --> C[Submit surgeon credentials + volumes]
  C --> D[Profile, specialties, indicative pricing]
  D --> E[Payout account + contacts]
  E --> F{Medical Director review}
  F -- Approved --> G[Status: verified -> public listing live]
  F -- Needs work --> D
  G --> H[Receives inquiries, manages cases]

Onboarding rules:

• A clinic must hold JCI or NABH accreditation and provide credentialed surgeon details before it can be verified.
• Until status is verified, the clinic is draft or pending and is not publicly listed.
• Day-to-day management happens in the clinic console: maintain the public profile, keep procedures and indicative pricing current, respond to inquiries, advance active cases by stage, view verified reviews, and manage the clinical team.

Inquiry lifecycle: new to quoted to accepted or declined. Case lifecycle: Inquiry to Quoted to Treatment planned to In treatment to Recovery to Closed.

3.2 Payment and refund processes

These rules govern the escrow that the patient funds at stage 5 and that releases across the Treat and Return phases. The patient-facing escrow funding step is part of the lead-to-case funnel, and the final release is part of close-out.

flowchart TD
  A[Quote accepted] --> B[Deposit funds enter escrow]
  B --> C{Milestone verified?}
  C -- Admission --> D[Release admission tranche]
  C -- Procedure --> E[Release procedure tranche]
  C -- Discharge --> F[Release discharge tranche]
  D --> G[Ledger entry posted]
  E --> G
  F --> G
  G --> H[Close-out: final release + reconciliation]
  B --> R{Cancellation?}
  R -- Pre-arrival --> R1[Full refund]
  R -- After milestone --> R2[Partial per disclosed schedule]

Payment and refund rules:

• Funds release only on verified milestones; the milestone schedule shows released, held and scheduled tranches.
• Pre-arrival cancellations are fully refundable. After a milestone is reached, refunds follow the disclosed schedule.
• Currency is per corridor; the ledger is auditable and immutable, with corrections by compensating entries.
• The facilitation fee is a B2B fee from the hospital. There is no clinical fee-split. See Legal and Compliance.

3.3 Escalation and support processes

flowchart TD
  A[Issue raised: patient, clinic, or system] --> B{Type?}
  B -- Clinical complication --> C[24/7 clinical escalation -> Medical Director]
  B -- Visa / travel disruption --> D[Ops playbook: rebook, expedite, fallback]
  B -- Payment / refund dispute --> E[Finance review + escrow hold]
  B -- Service complaint --> F[Logged, time-bound resolution]
  C --> G[Resolution recorded + hospital scorecard updated]
  D --> G
  E --> G
  F --> G

Escalation rules:

• A 24/7 clinical escalation path exists for complications, with the Medical Director as backstop.
• Every complaint and incident is logged with a time-bound resolution and fed back into the hospital scorecard.
• Disputes that touch money place the relevant escrow tranche on hold pending finance review.
• The detailed, scenario-by-scenario responses are catalogued in Edge Cases and Exception Handling.