Factors Affecting the Satisfaction of Medical Tourists: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Context: Medical tourism is a relatively new concept with rapidly growing application. It is defined as purposeful travel to receive the health services provided in other countries and is underlain by patient satisfaction as one of the quality indicators that primarily attract medical tourists. The purpose of this study was to systematically review the factors that affect the satisfaction of people who travel to other countries to receive medical treatment. Evidence Acquisition: To identify contributors to the satisfaction of medical tourists, we conducted a systematic review between July 2016 and March 2017. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Prizma checklist was used as a guide for the review. The quality of the papers was examined independently by two of the researchers using the Kmet checklist. Further filtering left us with a final sample of 20 studies, which were subjected to content analysis using the input-process-output (IPO) model. The factors identified were then represented in the IPO model. A total of 376 studies were obtained from 9 English and Persian databases using 6 main search keywords. The specific keywords used were “medical tourist,” “health tourist,” “health tourism,” “medical tourism,” “satisfaction,” and “consent.” were searched from the databases of Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, ProQuest, Embase, Ovid, magiran and SID. Results: The examination of the studies yielded 137 effective factors that influence the satisfaction of medical tourists. The factors were classified into six categories, namely, services, manpower, information, costs, physical conditions, and health equipment. Among these categories, the service domain encompassed most of the influencing factors. Conclusions: The satisfaction of medical tourists is determined by different factors, among which satisfaction with the provision of services has been of great interest to medical tourists. Specifically, medical tourists evaluate the manner by which health care providers offer services, the quality of care that they receive, and the behavior of hospital staff. The results present implications for destination countries in their efforts to enhance the positive features of their services and address those that negatively affect the satisfaction of medical tourists.