The aim of the present study are: to explore and examine the current greek private organizations that offer medical tourism services and asses the potentiality of growth of the greek medical tourism sector. / Σκοπός της εργασίας είναι να εξετάσει και να εξερευνήσει τους υπάρχοντες ιδιωτικούς οργανισμούς που προσφέρουν υπηρεσίες ιατρικού τουρισμού και να εξακριβώσει την πιθανότητα ανάπτυξης του τομέα ιατρικού τουρισμού στην Ελλάδα.

The purpose of this study is to investigate medical tourism in Jordan through the international patients‘ perspective. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of international patients‘ consumption behaviour to seek medical treatment, and while at the destination. And also to better understand the medical tourists‘ perceptions of quality of healthcare services. This research was designed to facilitate the identification of the characteristics of medical tourists, their visit, their sources of information and the main pull/push factors influencing their decision to travel. Moreover, it was designed to identify the level of satisfaction held by medical tourists towards their patient experience and their satisfaction predictors, by translating, adapting and validating a patient-centred quality of care instrument and assessing its psychometric properties amongst them. This research used a mixed-methods case study approach. It was conducted in 7 private hospitals with a primary quantitative research method through 302 interviewer-administered questionnaires and descriptive quantitative statistics, Mann-Whitney U Non-Parametric Significance Tests, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Factor Analysis. As a complement, qualitative research through 20 semi-structured interviews and content analysis was conducted in order to provide further insights into this area of research. The findings suggest that word-of-mouth recommendations and reputation have the utmost role in informing international patients of healthcare options in Jordan. Furthermore, recommendations from family and friends are the second most important after availability of specialized treatments in influencing the 3 international patients‘ decision to seek international healthcare. Moreover, significant differences in these terms exist between first and repeat visitors, which hold important implications for tourism marketers. Further marketing implications also exist as most patients shift in the type of activities they and their companions undertake after the main treatment period is completed. In terms of satisfaction, Factor Analysis suggest that medical tourists satisfaction of quality of services in Jordan‘s hospitals is based on six predictors including nutritional care, nursing care, physician care, room atmosphere, the procedure for incoming patients and other hospital services. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses show that medical tourists are satisfied with the quality of health care services rendered to them. However, minor areas show less satisfaction. The findings raise issues regarding the recruitment of non-Arab speaking nurses. Drawing together these findings presents implications for medical tourism management, international healthcare marketing, policy-making, and continuous improvement of the services they provide.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to evaluate the position of the Czech Republic in the field of health tourism, particularly assisted reproduction. The theoretical chapters include the definitions of the following topics: health tourism, organization of tourist agents and tour operators, marketing methods and the issue of assisted reproduction. In the analytic part, the offer of the Czech Republic in this field is described, the survey investigating customer behaviour of the patients as tourists is evaluated and SWOT analysis of the Czech Republic and of its offer in the field of assisted reproduction is conducted. In the last part of the thesis, a tourism product including a fertility treatment is created and some distribution channels are suggested.

The goal of this master thesis is to analyze issues connected to medical tourism, to show, how the Czech Republic could benefit from supporting this niche and imply whether this support is worth it. Bearing this in mind, I suggest a plan of medical tourism support, which could be implemented by the Czech Ministry of Health. In the theoretical part, the term medical tourism is defined and it is determined what implications medical tourism might have for both source and destination countries. The legal framework on medical tourism is described and I mention reasons why it should be the Ministry of Health's responsibility to support the segment. The analytical part describes and analyzes in depth the current state of medical tourism in the Czech Republic. A research on the hospitals' position on medical tourism has been carried out. Furthermore, a questionnaire had been sent to embassies of the Czech Republic around the world. Based on discoveries made in the analytical part, I conclude that although medical tourism in the Czech Republic has certain potential, this potential has its limits. The main limit might be that public hospitals have little motivation to seek for revenues outside of subsidies. In accordance with the aforementioned, I suggest a plan on medical tourism support for the Ministry of Health and a budget of its implementation is also established. The thesis also mentions its possible connection to medical export.

The thesis deals with interesting field in relation to international business, with so called medical tourism. The field is introduced in the initial chapter as well as its most important world markets and consumer's characteristics are introduced. The second part of the thesis is practical and focuses on the performed research whose aim was to find out if the medical tourism generates higher profits than standard tourism, and if yes, how big is the difference.

Little is known about the factors that influence people from the Caribbean to seek reproductive health services in the United States. In this paper, I focus on Indo-Caribbean women from Guyana and Trinidad who undertake reproductive journeys to New York. I ask: (1) What influences Indo-Caribbean women to begin their reproductive journeys to Richmond Hill, New York? (2) How do Indo-Caribbean women challenge gender norms during their reproductive journeys? (3) How does women’s class inform their decision making in challenging gendered norms? After conducting 30 in-depth interviews with Indo-Caribbean women from Guyana and Trinidad who seek reproductive health services in New York, I find that Indo-Caribbean women’s reproductive journeys are influenced by sexism experienced within households, communities, and doctors’ offices, lack of proper care, legal restrictions, and unaffordable treatment. Another driver is support from women networks. Social networks helped women challenge gendered norms around motherhood that are present within communities in home countries. As women receive support from their networks, they challenge gender norms varied by their class. Women from middle-income households are more likely to challenge gender norms outwardly. Obtaining reproductive health care abroad becomes a journey with multidimensional experiences of gendered negotiations and constraints.

The high number of uninsured or underinsured Americans and the spiraling cost of healthcare in the United States has spurred growth in patients traveling abroad for affordable healthcare, which has become known as medical tourism. It is projected to become a $21 billion a year industry by 2011. Overseas prices for most procedures, including airfare, are often half the cost of those performed in the United States; some procedures are 80% less. International facilities in India, Thailand, and elsewhere are obtaining Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation and aggressively marketing to Western customers and insurance agencies and advertising high quality standards and personalized service. The acceptance of medial tourism is growing, with a recent poll showing more than 40% of US healthcare consumers willing to travel abroad for care. Insurance companies have begun to integrate foreign care into their coverage, offering discounts to patients agreeing to overseas travel. Physician groups have been slow to respond, even though estimates are that medical tourism may represent $162 billion in lost spending in America by 2012. Some experts think the continued US healthcare cost crisis will drive an increase in medical tourism and international competition, significantly impacting domestic physicians and hospitals.

В данной работе проводится обоснование теоретических положений и разработка методического инструментария для развития въездного медицинского туризма в России в условиях трансформации экономики страны. / In this paper, the substantiation of theoretical provisions and the development of methodological tools for the development of inbound medical tourism in Russia in the context of the transformation of the country's economy are carried out.

With all the developments in the world today, medical tourism is becoming increasingly more popular. People have discovered that there is a chance to seek medical care elsewhere than in their country of residence, often at a lower price than in that country. The fact is that people are able to travel easily between countries for that purpose nowadays, and people have started to travel for various medical treatments. Dental tourism is a phenomenon that has been growing rapidly along with medical tourism in general. The reasons why people go abroad for dental treatments are various but, in most cases, the fact is that it is possible for them to have a treatment in a country where the costs are lower than in their country of residence. It has been argued whether going abroad is really worth it even with the lower prices at the dental tourism destination and with that said it is interesting to see how the dental tourists’ experience culminates. This research’s aim is to explore how satisfied Icelandic dental tourists are with their dental experience and what effect the dental experience has on other factors of the travel and, the travel experience. This research uses a qualitative research approach where semistructured interviews were conducted in person, through a phone call and through Zoom. The participants for the research are 11 total and they were found using the convenient sampling method and they all volunteered to participate in the research. The results were not identical, but overall, the participants were satisfied with their dental experience and all of the participants were satisfied with their tourism experience. The negative dental experiences were mostly with the after-treatment stage where some participants were experiencing problems with their dental treatment. The participants that traveled to the destination in company of their family all agreed that it made the experience for them more positive to have their family as support. The participants that traveled alone had different perspectives on whether having someone to support them would have made any difference on their experience. Only one participant was not able to say that they would recommend doing dental tourism to others. All of the participants would visit the dental tourism destination again, it did not matter whether the participant had a negative experience with the dental treatment received or a positive one.

Medical tourism is not a new phenomenon but in its current form, medical tourism or health travel is a practice that stems from the structures of the healthcare system. For citizens of countries with primarily private healthcare and citizens of countries with socialized healthcare the forces behind seeking international healthcare are economic (cheaper prices) and temporal (long queues), respectively. The foreign nation-state/patient relationship is an integral part in facilitating the medical tourist/hospital relationship and is also a way to discern discrepancies in welcomed versus unwelcomed visitors. On the one hand, medical tourists are welcomed visitors while other types of "tourists" are not. During my fieldwork as a volunteer at a private Costa Rican hospital, I was quickly made aware of the popular discourse that denigrated Nicaraguans entering Costa Rica while simultaneously catering to Euro-American tourists. This is a clear example of the discrepancy between neoliberal doctrine and neoliberal practices in that the free market promotes the transnational flow of capital while slowing or stopping altogether the flow of (certain) bodies. The United States and South Korea both issue special medical visas to medical tourists and these practices have thus far made international borders even more penetrable by the global elite and/or those with the capital to afford medical care in another country; thus graying the distinction between citizen and non-citizen. The means by which the medical tourism industry, from a marketing standpoint, attracts this global elite is through the accreditation process, which is the act of an accrediting body legitimizing a business, medical facility or school through an intense, expensive, and lengthy process. Within the medical tourism industry, hospitals located in developing nation-states are clamoring for accreditation from agencies based in the U.S. and Europe. Many in this industry believe that such accreditation will increase the number of foreign, primarily Western, patients. I argue that accreditation is a form of subjectification, because many international hospitals that cater to Western patients want to legitimize themselves through an American and/or European body even though their healthcare systems rank higher than the U.S. Accreditation makes international hospitals "qualified" to provide medical services in the eyes of Western medical tourists and the medical tourism industry as a whole, which underscores the quality and superiority of many healthcare systems in the developing world. The problems that I have undertaken is the discrepancy between neoliberalism and the flow of (certain) bodies and capital vis medical tourism and public policy as well as how accreditation is used as a form of surveillance, gaze, and subject making that renders hospitals nearly powerless to the standards set by accrediting bodies. / Anthropology