Factors influencing medical travel into the United States

Attracting a geographically diverse patient base: who is willing to travel for hospital care?

Purpose

Medical tourism, characterized by patients leaving their home community to seek health-care services elsewhere, is on the rise globally. In New York state, approximately 5% of the 35,661,559 hospital visits in 2018 were non-residents. Although some are visiting New York for other reasons, and unintentionally wind up hospitalized – a percentage of this population come to New York intentionally to seek care. Understanding the make-up, needs and patterns of this population allows hospitals to tailor investments in marketing, technological resources and culturally responsive initiatives to prepare for broadening their patient population and remain competitive globally.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a rich all-hospital discharge data set, the authors identify patterns in diagnoses, treatment and hospital choice of patients who intentionally travel across borders for health care. The authors model the characteristics associated with “elective” admit patients with a multivariate logistic regression approach.

Findings

The authors find that among non-resident patients in New York, domestic travelers, those using insurance plans for payment and women are positively associated with seeking elective inpatient care across border. There are clear patterns of type of treatment that is more likely to be sought, with care for musculoskeletal concerns accounting for more than one-third of all non-resident elective admissions. Proximity also matters, both in terms of patients being more likely to live in a travel zone adjacent to the state, as well as being more likely to seek care from hospitals in counties closest to the borders.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study, using a large set of claims data, that is able to empirically differentiate between patients who travel to NY for the primary purpose of obtaining health care versus those who emergently must access care while traveling for other reasons. This approach can inform future studies seeking to better understand patient migration patterns and strategic educational and marketing initiatives to motivate consumers to cross borders to seek care.

Sustainable Governance on the Intention of Medical Tourism in Uzbekistan

Medical tourism is a growing niche market with huge potential as the 6th industry of medical services, including an unforgettable trip. Due to these advantages, Uzbekistan hopes to be a leader in central Asia concerning medical tourism. Contrary to this ambitious goal, Uzbekistan patients still prefer going abroad for medical services. Therefore, in order for Uzbekistan to be a hub for medical tourism, the sustainable governance factors of medical tourism need to be found for local patients going overseas. Under this research motivation, this study evaluates how the medical, tourism, and information sharing factors influence behavioral intention based on the structural equation model (SEM) with a random sample of 498 residents in Uzbekistan. Perceived value and behavioral intention are used as a mediating variable and a dependent variable, respectively. The main findings are summarized as follows. First, the medical factor and information sharing are very important factors for behavioral intention, with high coefficient values of 0.399 and 0.516, respectively, while the tourism factor is not influential on the behavioral intention statistically. This implies that Uzbekistani patients do not consider tourism factors as a core condition, instead focusing on the service quality of the medical operation and convenience for foreign patients. Second, in the indirect model, we found that perceived value takes a fully mediating role between medical factors and behavioral intention, while it takes a partially mediating role between information sharing and behavioral intention, implying that strong promotion policies are required for the advantages of tourism and enhanced access to information.

Iranian Medical Tourism Industry and Selected Countries in 2020: A Comparative Study

Background: Today, medical tourism is a growing phenomenon in the healthcare industry, especially among developing countries. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare the Iranian medical tourism industry with selected countries. Methods: This comparative study was conducted in 2020. Data were gathered from databases, including PubMed, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Magiran, SID, and websites of the World Tourism Association, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Ministry of Health of the selected countries from 2000 to 2020. A researcher-made checklist was used to collect data. Selected countries were compared in terms of the status of tourism and travel competitiveness, governance and policy-making status, the status of the medical tourism industry, and medical tourism infrastructure Results: The main difference between the selected countries and Iran lies in the organizational structure of the main stakeholders of the tourism industry. In other countries, this industry is organized and supervised by specific coordination bodies. In terms of tourism and travel competitiveness, Singapore, with a global rank of 17, was better than other countries. Based on the status of the medical tourism industry, Costa Rica ranked 7th in the world, and Singapore, the UAE (Dubai), Turkey, UAE (Abu Dhabi), Jordan, and Iran ranked 15, 22, 27, 31 35, and 41, respectively. In Iran, all indicators of medical tourism infrastructure were lower than those of other countries except for competitive prices. Conclusions: Considering a low rank of Iran in all the studied components, the organizational integration structure of the medical tourism industry and increasing competitiveness can help the development of this industry in Iran.

The north-south policy divide in transnational healthcare: a comparative review of policy research on medical tourism in source and destination countries

Medical tourism occupies different spaces within national policy frameworks depending on which side of the transnational paradigm countries belong to, and how they seek to leverage it towards their developmental goals. This article draws attention to this policy divide in transnational healthcare through a comparative bibliometric review of policy research on medical tourism in select source (Canada, United States and United Kingdom) and destination countries (Mexico, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore), using a systematic search of the Web of Science (WoS) database and review of grey literature. We assess cross-national differences in policy and policy research on medical tourism against contextual policy landscapes and challenges, and examine the convergence between research and policy. Our findings indicate major disparities in development agendas and national policy concerns, both between and among source and destination countries. Further, we find that research on medical tourism does not always address prevailing policy challenges, just as the policy discourse oftentimes neglects relevant policy research on the subject. Based on our review, we highlight the limited application of theoretical policy paradigms in current medical tourism research and make the case for a comparative policy research agenda for the field.

The identity and role of stakeholders in the medical tourism industry: state of the art

Purpose

This paper aims to address and identify the major stakeholders in the medical tourism industry, based on their participation in medical tourism activities and their support for medical tourism development.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper systematically reviews the content of medical tourism studies from literature to identify key stakeholders and address the roles they play in the medical tourism industry.

Findings

This study shows that the key stakeholders in the medical tourism industry are eight, namely, medical tourists, health-care providers, government agencies, facilitators, accreditation and credentialing bodies, health-care marketers, insurance providers and infrastructure and facilities. These stakeholders strongly influence medical tourists’ decision-making process in seeking medical treatment abroad. Besides, a successful medical tourism development depends greatly on the excellent partnership between all stakeholders.

Practical implications

This paper sheds light on the crucial role of these stakeholders that can be an important consideration in medical tourists’ decision-making process and industry growth. The study can facilitate policymakers in designing and developing policies to improve medical tourism practices.

Originality/value

This paper expands the knowledge about medical tourism literature by identifying and explaining the significant role of each stakeholder in the industry. The results of this paper are quite revealing to all practitioners in terms of the potential strategies and medical tourism growth. The study establishes a foundation for future medical tourism research in the rapidly growing industry.