Healthcare Facilities and Medical Tourism Across the World: A Bibliometric Analysis.

Abstract

This study aimed to review the literature on healthcare facilities and medical tourism from a range of nations that have established medical tourism sectors and assess the effect of healthcare facilities on medical tourism. A bibliometric study of the Scopus database was carried out by using the search terms '(Facility AND of AND healthcare) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (health AND tourism) AND medical tourism' for the years 2012-2022. A qualitative evaluation of the literature was then performed to find and locate 92 articles. VOSviewer and NVivo 12 Plus were employed for data analysis. The findings indicated that the following trending subject keywords were used during the period in question: health (rate 1.97), medicine (rate 1.91), tourism (rate 1.70), care (rate 0.83), facilities (rate 0.64) and healthcare (rate 0.61). Furthermore, this research identified four distinct clusters: i) medical tourism, ii) healthcare quality, iii) healthcare system and iv) health services. The study found that healthcare facilities, as actors that have a role in the development of medical tourism, have not been sufficiently explored, even though there is evidence that they play a role in the growth of the sector. This result is in line with Heung's argument, which makes the same point.