Surveying the Factors Affecting the Selection of Hospitals by Medical Tourists

Abstract

<strong>Introduction:</strong> Medical tourism is one of the branches of health tourism and has been an important issue in many developed countries during the past few years. This research has aimed to study the factors affecting the selection of the hospitals of Tehran by the medical tourists who had chosen Iran's capital city for their treatment. <br/><strong>Methods:</strong> The present study is a descriptive inferential cross sectional study which was conducted in the summer season of 2014 in the Tehran's hospitals. The study population included all the reachable medical tourists who had come to the hospitals of Tehran for their treatment during the summer season of 2014. The sample of the interview section included 10-15 experts who were randomly chosen to be interviewed. The sample of the questionnaire section included 50 medical tourists who had come to Tehran's hospitals for their treatment during the summer season of 2014 (reachable sample). The data of the present study was analyzed by the SPSS software version 20. <br/><strong>Results:</strong> According to the results of this study it is clear that famous and reliable physicians and also low health service costs are the two most important factors attracting medical tourists to the hospitals of Tehran. Also, the location of the hospitals have proven to be acceptable for the patients. On the other hand, factors which are related to promotion and the physical evidence of hospitals were not in an acceptable condition. <br/><strong>Conclusion:</strong> Despite having famous and reliable physicians and low health service costs in Iran, it can be said that there are still many factors such as better marketing and advertisement, international standardizations and developing recreational centers that need to be focused on, in order to gain the well-earned international position in the medical tourism industry.