КЛАСТЕРНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ СТРАН СНГ ДЛЯ РАЗВИТИЯ МЕДИЦИНСКОГО ТУРИЗМА В КАЗАХСТАНЕ

Abstract

Lack of highly qualified specialists or modern medical equipment, lack of financial resources, waiting in line in their own country encourages the majority of citizens to seek timely and high-quality medical care in another country. All conditions have been created in Kazakhstan to provide health care to foreign citizens. However, there are gaps in marketing strategies to promote medical tourism. The purpose of this study was to conduct a cluster analysis of the CIS countries on healthcare organization and morbidity for the subsequent determination of marketing policy to engage potential patients into medical tourism in Kazakhstan. Methods used: quantitative, qualitative and cluster analysis using Statistica v.8 software (StatSoftInc., USA). Because of unavailability of the necessary data, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were not included in the analysis. Since Kazakhstan is considered as a point of destination in this study, its indicators were excluded as well. The results of the study showed that within the CIS territory countries have different disease incidence rates regarding major classes of diseases, levels of healthcare organization, as well as significant differences in transport infrastructure, tourist services, information and communication technologies. This also plays an important role in shaping the marketing strategy of medical tourism. As a result of the analysis, 2 large and 4 small clusters of the CIS countries were developed. The formed clusters show similarities not only in healthcare, but also in cultural and racial characteristics. Each cluster was given a characteristic that, in current realities, can be used in targeted marketing tools. Thus, the obtained data can be used as one of the methods to eliminate major barriers slowing down the development of medical tourism, announced by the Concept for devloping medical tourism in Kazakhstan. Keywords: medical tourism; cluster analysis; export of medical services; CIS countries.