Whether you’re caring for patients or scaling a health care delivery system, Boston Children’s Global Services offers the full spectrum of services to our international partners:
Refer an international patient
Boston Children’s is dedicated to making the referral process as easy and seamless as possible. Our physicians see more than 2,500 international patients from about 100 countries each year. Our global medical services team is dedicated exclusively to the needs of patients from around the world. We have the processes and coordination team in place to support international physicians as they seek to refer patients to us. Refer a patient now.
Get a remote second opinion or consultation
A second opinion from Boston Children’s can confirm a patient’s diagnosis, clarify treatment options, and establish the recommended treatment before they come to Boston. We provide a range of remote consultative services to support clinicians around the world, enabling local physicians and patients to access Boston Children’s expertise without having to travel to Boston. Request a second opinion.
Boston Children’s offers various virtual care models to help provide the highest level of care in the most effective setting while ensuring high patient and provider satisfaction. We continue to enhance and expand these models to meet our patient care needs. Our current provider offerings include:
- Virtual consults: Scheduled, non-emergent video consults between our specialist, partner hospital provider, and patient. These consults can improve timely access to specialty pediatric services, enhance clinician and patient experience, and keep care local within the patient’s community. Currently offered for dermatology, genetics, and rheumatology, with more in development.
- Physician-to-physician case consults: Live phone and video consults between Boston Children’s specialists and partner providers that allow us discuss cases (without the patient or family) in a group setting. These in-depth provider-to-provider case consults include the option for a full medical records review. Our partner providers benefit from a review of differential diagnosis, care plan development, and support for treatment and next steps. Available for all service lines and specialties.
- Remote interpretation services: Professional interpretation of diagnostic studies. Currently offered for cardiology, neurology, ophthalmology, and radiology.
Collaborate with us
Boston Children’s offers a range of advisory and education services to our international partners. Based on our experience working internationally, we provide collaborators with the tools to build, scale, and support their pediatric programs.
Advisory and consulting services
Clinical care: Our team of Boston Children’s clinicians support pediatric hospitals in advancing clinical care and comprehensive clinical services. Our services include assessing clinical services, structures, guidelines, hospital policies, and protocols. This may also include conducting needs assessments to address gaps, sharing of best practices, development and implementation of specialized programs, as well as other support required for comprehensive pediatric clinical services for both inpatient and outpatient settings.
Boston Children’s can also provide insights on operating policies and procedures established to meet JCI accreditation requirements through documentation reviews and consultation services. Specific areas in which Boston Children’s can advise include patient assessment and care, patient safety and quality, infection prevention and control, access to and continuity of care, and outcome measurement systems.
Programmatic development consultations: Our team of clinical leaders supports the development of comprehensive pediatric patient and family services and clinical departmental services including operational management to scale clinical departments with improved outcomes and high-quality care. Our team can also provide guidance on other support services that require specific translation to pediatrics, including family centered care, child life services, and other administrative and departmental services to support pediatric organizations.
Educational collaboration opportunities: Boston Children’s offers a range of education services including in-person and virtual learning programs for organizations, customized to meet the unique needs of international audiences. These programs can be customized to focus on a broad selection of clinical and managerial topics.
We also work with other hospitals to develop and provide ongoing training for clinical, management, and other staff. Training may occur at Boston Children’s main campus or virtually. We also offer observership programs in Boston for physicians and interprofessional team members that are tailored to meet the specific needs of individual learners and groups. These programs require English language proficiency; simultaneous translation can be provided for all other programs. Our educational programs include:
- customized discipline-specific seminars and courses (in-person, virtual, or hybrid)
- executive education and leadership
- simulation programs
- conferences for large groups
- visiting speaker requests
- observership programs
- webinars and webinar series
Visiting physician program: Boston Children’s experts can travel to partner sites to provide education, teaching, and in some cases direct patient care (subject to appropriate medical licensing and compliance with U.S. and local laws). Our experts work alongside local clinicians to share their knowledge and expertise. Our visiting physicians help identify when the patient acuity and complexity merits travel, ensuring only patients appropriate for travel abroad are identified.
Learn about our partnerships and projects
Boston Children’s partners with organizations around the world to transform patient care and improve quality of care. We also provide education and have had more than 20,000 in-person and virtual learners from more than 90 countries in the past five years. In addition, we’ve welcomed 1,000+ observers for immersive onsite observership programs in Boston, which have occurred across all pediatric subspecialties.
Collaborations have included programs and services in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Education highlights by region
Asia: Boston Children’s has developed collaborations with health care institutions in Asia, including multiple referring entities to support patient travel and repatriation for continuation of care with continued development.
In the past five years, Boston Children’s has hosted more than 300 observers from the following countries: China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The highest representation has been from China, with more than 125 observers from many provinces including: Beijing, Chongqing, Fujian, Guangdong, Guanxi, Hefei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, and Zhejiang.
Middle East: Significant collaborations with partners for educational and consulting projects including joint educational symposiums, visiting physicians, and more.
In the past five years, Boston Children’s has hosted more than 60 observers from the following countries: Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
Europe: Highlights from our collaborations in Europe include extensive multi-year training and knowledge exchange in Simulation Training (SIMPeds), participation in international conferences, and other educational services.
In the past five years, Boston Children’s has hosted more than 250 observers from the following countries: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
Latin America: Boston Children’s has collaborated with hospitals and organizations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Uruguay, and others.
In the past five years, Boston Children’s has hosted more than 300 observers from the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay.