The relationship between the growth in the health sector and inbound health tourism: the case of Turkey

Healthcare provision for medical tourism: A comparative review

Providing quality services, using modern technologies, having effective marketing, and providing services at an international level have led to the globalization of hospital services. This study aimed to identify the components of health services in developing countries that provide services to international patients. A comparative review was conducted by searching in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Google, and the websites of the World Medical Tourism Organization, the World Bank, and the Ministry of Health of the selected countries from 2000 to 2022. Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Costa Rica, the UAE, and Singapore were selected. The data were collected and analyzed using a comparative table. Different strategies were used to develop the medical tourism industry among the studied countries, but the main challenges in this field included the inappropriateness of the quality of the services provided or the provision of services that did not meet the needs of patients, the lack of expert human resource, not using medical facilitation companies, communication problems with patients, insufficient government support for medical tourism, and strict laws regarding business. The development of activities in the medical tourism industry requires planning in various dimensions. It seems that developing the medical marketing and activities of facilitator companies to facilitate patient admission, monitoring the quality of services provided, improving interdepartmental coordination, and considering a single trustee for this industry will improve the medical tourism status in Iran.

Understanding the Reality of China's Health Tourism and Consumer Demand From the Perspective of Consumers: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background

Travel for health reasons is booming around the world and in China. As a huge source and destination of health tourism, little is understood about the volume, characteristics, motivations, and preferences of health travelers in China. This study provides details of China's health tourism reality and consumer demand of Chinese residents who did or will travel for health.

Methods

We established a questionnaire through literature analysis and a focus group, then collected 695 responses based on an online random sampling design. Finally, 629 questionnaires (effective recovery rate was 90%) were analyzed with statistical description, binary logistic regression, and word frequency analysis to draw the reality of health tourism, explore the influential factors, and sort out suggestions.

Results

In this study, 387 respondents knew of health tourism (61.53%), 446 reported interest (70.9%), and 234 had traveled for health reasons before (37.2%), with 329 occurring within China (91.4%). The top three reasons for health tourism were decompression and relaxation (116, 20%), physical examination (82, 14.1%), and health care (73, 12.6%). High costs (372, 16.3%), little disposable time (309, 13.5%), and lack of reliable professional institutions (289, 12.6%) were the main potential barriers for consumers. Professional level and quality of the institution, personal privacy, and service personnel's attitude were the most important concerns for consumers when arranging health travel. Marital status (OR = 0.209, 95% CI = 0.085-0.514, P = 0.001) and attitude to health tourism (OR = 2.259, 95%CI = 1.553-3.287, P < 0.001) were factors for consumers' willingness to perform health tourism. "Propaganda" was proposed most frequently by participants, followed by "service" and "price".

Conclusion

The popularity of health tourists is low although there is a huge market in China. There are also differences between willingness of previous and prospective customers with varying socio-demographic characteristics in this investigation. Overall, more diverse propaganda measures should be taken, and government policies or legal documents ought to keep pace with it. Health tourism products' promotion, as well as supporting measures and brand, need to be emphasized.

Cross-border reproductive care: an Ethics Committee opinion

Cross-border reproductive care is a growing worldwide phenomenon, raising questions about why assisted reproductive technology patients travel for care, what harms and benefits may result, and what duties health care providers may have in advising and treating the patients who travel for reproductive services. Cross-border care may benefit or harm assisted reproductive technology stakeholders, including patients, offspring, providers, gamete donors, gestational carriers, and local populations in destination countries. This document replaces the previous document of the same name, last published in 2016.

Medical, Health and Wellness Tourism Research-A Review of the Literature (1970-2020) and Research Agenda

Medical, health and wellness tourism and travel represent a dynamic and rapidly growing multi-disciplinary economic activity and field of knowledge. This research responds to earlier calls to integrate research on travel medicine and tourism. It critically reviews the literature published on these topics over a 50-year period (1970 to 2020) using CiteSpace software. Some 802 articles were gathered and analyzed from major databases including the Web of Science and Scopus. Markets (demand and behavior), destinations (development and promotion), and development environments (policies and impacts) emerged as the main three research themes in medical-health-wellness tourism. Medical-health-wellness tourism will integrate with other care sectors and become more embedded in policy-making related to sustainable development, especially with regards to quality of life initiatives. A future research agenda for medical-health-tourism is discussed.

International tourism, social distribution, and environmental Kuznets curve: evidence from a panel of G-7 countries

The study examined the long-run and causal relationship between international tourism receipts (ITR), social distribution, FDI inflows, and carbon (CO2) emissions to verify the different alternative and plausible hypotheses, i.e., environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, "pollution haven" hypothesis (PHH), and "resource efficiency" (REF) hypothesis, in a panel of Group of Seven (G-7) countries for the period of 1995-2015. The study employed panel random effect (RE) regression and panel causality test for robust inferences. The results show that ITR and FDI inflows increase CO2 emissions to verify PHH while government education expenditures (GEE) decrease CO2 emissions to substantiate the REF hypothesis across countries. The results validate the inverted U-shaped EKC relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth (EG) with the turning point of US$30,900. In addition, GEE increase ITR while healthcare expenditures (HEXP) decrease ITR, which partially supported the REF hypothesis in a panel of countries. The impact of income inequality (INEQ) on ITR is positive at current time period while at later stages INEQ declines ITR that supported an inverted U-shaped relationship between them. The causality estimates confirm the bidirectional relationship between ITR and EG, while there is unidirectional casualty running from (i) ITR, EG, FDI inflows, and GEE to CO2 emissions, (ii) FDI inflows to ITR, (iii) GEE to EG, (iv) EG to social expenditures, (v) income inequality to health expenditures, (vi) social expenditures (SEXP) to ITR, and (vii) INEQ to ITR. There is no causal relationship found between ITR and EG during the study time period. The findings endorse the need for efficient resource spending, sustainable tourism (STR), and rational income distribution to improve environmental sustainability agenda in a panel of G-7 countries.

Treating Infertility: Current Affairs of Cross-border Reproductive Care

Infertility patients are willing to travel abroad to receive the medical treatment of choice. A 2010 study reported that approximately 25,000 couples travel abroad annually seeking infertility treatment. The purpose of this review is to analyze the criteria and risks related to cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) from the perspective of the patients and explore the issues raised regarding the country of origin and the destination country. A computerized search was performed in PubMed employing respective keywords. The total number of published articles provided by our PubMed search was 1905. Criteria for selecting the destination country include: the economic status, legislation, quality of care and anonymity. Despite the fact that CBRC is becoming a familiar concept, it raises concerns for the practitioner and issues of a social and bioethical nature. Most of them stem from the fact that health care acquires a commercialization aspect. Medical tourism entails several risks, such as misconceptions regarding the destination country, and legal issues arising from differences in the judiciary systems. Larger studies evaluating all aspects of CBRC are imperative. Quality assurance, a consensus and a common platform of practice, along with a system of international governance based on human rights, are a necessity for CBRC patients.