TURKEY AS A MEDICAL TOURISM DESTINATION: A STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVE MARKETING FACTORS ON PREFERENCES OF THE ARAB MEDICAL TOURISTS IN TURKEY (original) (raw)
Journal of Health Management, 2019
The main purpose of this study is to identify the aspects that are considered relatively more important by medical tourists from the Arab world as well as Turkish healthcare providers’ ability to perform these tasks and functions well. Additionally, patients from the Arab world were asked for their reasons for seeking care abroad and the factors affecting their choice of destination (Turkey). Each of the parameters’ importance–performance scores that were collected from medical tourists through a structured questionnaire were analysed by their positions on the importance–performance analysis (IPA) graph. The IPA demonstrated that eight out of 17 aspects of medical services were considered very important by patients and were delivered with high degree of performance by a facility. Seven of the parameters were in ‘low priority—Quadrant 3’, which means that providers performed relatively poorly in these areas and patients did not consider these as important as well. Only one of the par...
INVESTIGATION OF THE FACTORS THAT SHAPE MEDICAL TOURISM: THE CASE OF TURKEY
This study aims to investigate the factors that shape medical tourism and to evaluate these factors in the context of Turkey. Studies and reviews that examine the factors affecting the preferences of patients admitted within the scope of the medical tourism were taken into consideration. Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University electronic library, Sagem, Pubmed and Google academics were used in the literature search conducted. It was observed that the studies mainly focused on up to 9 factors, including quality, price, waiting time, other tourism activities, intermediary institutions, legislation, communication, technology and socioeconomic status of the country. From Turkey's perspective, it was observed that quality, price, waiting time, other tourism activities and technology are adequate in Turkey, whereas there were deficiencies in socioeconomic status, intermediary institutions and legislation areas of the country.
MEDICAL TOURISM: AN ASSESSMENT ON TURKEY
2012
As a result of rapid globalization in healthcare services, humankind was introduced with the new form of medical tourism, and the direction of new medical tourism is completely different than the traditional one. In the old form of medical tourism, people travel to the developed countries to get advanced treatment that is not possible in their less developed countries; whereas, this condition reversed with the emergence of new form (Carrera and Bridges, 2006). In the new conjuncture, people started to travel abroad, especially to the developing countries like India, Thailand and Taiwan (Crooks et al., 2011). Many countries started to investigate the ways to benefit from the opportunities provided by the medical tourism as both exporter and importer of healthcare services. For example, USA seeks the way to reduce healthcare costs through medical tourism (US Senate, 2006; Marlowe and Sullivan, 2007). Turkey has also great potential to attract the interest of people as an important medical tourism destination. With its geographical advantage, Turkey accelerated its efforts to take place among the leaders in medical tourism. In this article, general conditions of medical tourism in the world, Turkey’s efforts to improve medical tourism and Turkey’s potential, advantages and disadvantages in medical tourism are discussed.
Factors Affecting Destination Choice in Medical Tourism
International Journal of Travel Medicine and Global Health
Introduction: Although many factors can affect the choice of destination in medical tourism, some factors are indispensable to medical tourists and medical tourism. The aim of this study was to analyze important factors affecting the selection of a destination by potential medical tourists. Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study, conducted in Turkey, included a population of 1700 people and a sample size of 317 people selected through purposive sampling. Values were evaluated with a 95% confidence interval and 0.05 standard error. A value of P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. The medical tourism scale and a demographic information form were used in data collection. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and path analysis were used as statistical methods. Analyses were made using IBM SPSS-AMOS 25.0. Results: In this study, 56.5% of the participants were male and 43.5% were female. The factors affecting the selection of medica...
Medical Tourist's Perception in Selecting their Destination: A Global Perspective
Iranian journal of public health, 2012
The need for better healthcare has grown significantly in recent years. In addition, the rising healthcare costs in the U.S. and in many European countries have forced many patients to seek medical treatment abroad, which has created the demand for medical tourism. With little yet known as to the perception of a medical tourist's destination selection, this study aims to explore medical tourist's perception in selecting their destination while going for medical treatment. Realizing the current need to examine closely the perception of medical tourists, this study had conducted a secondary study to collect data for assessing and identification of the key factors on patient's perception and destination selection criteria. The result confirms the existence of a very strong relationship between cost, service quality, treatment types and availability and marketing impact on the perception of the medical tourists' in selecting their medical tourism destination. This study ...
Investigation of Medical Tourism in Turkey Through SWOT-ANP
EngRN: Operations Research (Topic), 2020
Medical tourism is a niche area with full of opportunities and a high added value. Many countries and healthcare institutions have realized its fundamental role and have started to develop relevant strategies. Strategies for medical tourism cover high-quality service delivery, facilitating structural reforms, infrastructure arrangements, as well as promotional and marketing activities. Like many countries, Turkey is also interested in medical tourism. Moreover, it is one of the theming topics of the “10th Development Plan 2014-2018. This strategic plan covers four strategies for medical tourism, but the importance of these strategies is still uncovered. Therefore, it is essential to assess these strategies and to prioritize the selected ones for eliminating the uncertainty. It is always imperative to analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats accurately to identify an effective strategy. Hence, this study aimed to analyze Turkey’s current situation regarding medical t...
International Journal of Marketing Studies, 2014
Today, combination of medicine and tourism has turned into a new form of industry called health tourism. Health tourism industry has experienced a dramatic growth over the last decade. This industry is an opportunity for hospitals to extend their services to patients from other countries. The present study aims to identify factors contributing to the attraction of medical tourism along with ranking factors affecting customer satisfaction of Persian Gulf Countries .For this purpose, after studying the existing literature and matching the resulting data with the environmental conditions of the study six factors "the expertise and skill level of the hospital staff", "hospital facilities and equipments", "costs", "the way patients are treated by the staff and their relationship", "shared beliefs and values", "tourist and travel facilities" were determined and based on them questionnaires were designed and distributed to a number of patients of Persian Gulf Countries as well as the managers of the Razavi Hospital in Mashhad, where specialized medical tourism services are provided .Investigations indicated that from the viewpoint of both managers and patients, the most important factor affecting the attraction of the medical tourism of Razavi Hospital in Mashhad is the costs. These costs consist of medical expenses (such as hospital, medicine and tests costs), costs of travel and accommodation (such as hotel and guesthouse), transportation costs within the city and side expenditures (including visiting pilgrimage places and entertainment spots). Therefore, lowering the costs of medical treatments can be a strategy that the hospitals can benefit from in order to enter the medical tourism market.