The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) launches an E-Marketing campaign that will promote India as a quality Healthcare destination for persons across the globe and also increase the average time they stay in India. This will help other tourism related service industries, such as hotels, spas, and restaurants. On the whole, it will benefit the tourism industry and follow the Indian government’s strategy of promoting India as the ‘Medical Hub of Asia’.’ ‘ (Ministry of Indian Tourism, 2015)
The purpose behind the conduction of this empirical study is to analyse the levels of satisfaction of the foreign patients in the multi-speciality hospitals of India which is chosen as their medical tourism destination. These levels are given ranking based on their importance of quality healthcare standards that the hospitals should focus on. The research is mainly focus on the patients influencing behaviour, decision making process and the experiential values. For the development of the effective framework for the medical tourism which is largely a consumer driven trend, a hypothetical analysis is done in order to understand the motivational factors of the patients. This section of study will give an overview of the empirical research’s attainment, types of medical tourism, aims and objectives that are considered for the study and summarises the different stages of research study.
1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND
Medical tourism is a term that is used when a patient going to a different country for either urgent or elective medical procedures (Connell, 2011).It provides an opportunity for the patients who wanted to receive a quality healthcare in anywhere of the world within their personal budgets (Cortez, 2013).The rise in market value for medical tourism can be due to increased healthcare costs in well developed countries, cross border training and widespread air travel (Connell, 2011).For the patients who are travelling to developing countries for medical services from high industrialised nations can be primarily because of attractive low cost (Business Insider, 2014).Mc Kinsey & Company estimated the gross revenues of medical tourism in the world had reached more than $120 billion in 2014 from $80 billion in 2012[See figure 1]
Figure 1 . Medical Tourism Industry Revenues World Wide Analysis (billions of U.S. dollars)
Source (Mc Kinsey & company, 2014)
The popular hospitals which are known for their international standards are in Bumrungrad in Thailand and Apollo and Fortis hospitals in India, report revenue growth of about 20 percent to 25 percent annually (Mc Kinsey & company, 2014).McKinsey & Company report estimates that Indian medical tourism alone will grow to $7.3 billion by 2016 and Singapore hopes to treat 1 million foreign patients that year (McKinsey and the Confederation of Indian Industry, 2014). Currently the medical tourism is expanding worldwide, it involves about 50 countries in all continents and Asian countries like India, Singapore and Thailand are clearly in the lead (Horowitz, 2014).These three countries, which combined comprised about 90% of the medical tourism market share in Asia in 2014, have invested heavily in their health-care infrastructures to meet the increased demand for accredited medical care through first-class facilities, medical tourism is an opportunity for patients to travel for medical care and take advantage of reduced costs and wait times (health, 2014).The medical tourism is divided into three categories according to world health organisation : outbound implies travelling from India to other countries, inbound means travelling to India from other countries and intra-bound implies within the home country (domestic).
Table 1: Types of medical tourism (Chinai, 2013)
OUTBOUND MEDICAL TOURISM (World Health Organization, 2013)
Patients travelling from home country to
other countries to receive medical care (World Health Organization, 2013).
INBOUND MEDICAL TOURISM (World Health Organization, 2013)
Patients from other countries travelling to
India to receive medical care (World Health Organization, 2013)
INTRABOUND MEDICAL TOURISM
(DOMESTIC) (World Health Organization, 2013)
Patients travelling within home country
to receive medical care outside their
geographic area, typically to a Centre of
Excellence in another state/region (World Health Organization, 2013)
Source adopted from. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 85 (3), p161- 244.
1.2. MEDICAL TOURISM SCENARIO IN INDIA
India has been the most attractive destination for the visitors around the globe (Kaur, 2014). This is because of the heritage attraction of the country and growing medical care facilities in India (Cati, 2014).According to the estimation of the Price Water House Coopers projects the Indian Health care sector can be worth about $90 billion by 2016 (Cohen, 2013).Medical tourism is a developing concept and this sector is growing rapidly in countries like India which stands second in world’s healthcare economical standards (Kaur, 2014).Indian Brand equity Foundation (IBEF) suggests that the Indian health care sector can be expected to become a US$ 280 billion industry by 2020 with an expenditure to grow 14 percent annually (Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management, 2011).India offers other services like yoga, meditation and Ayurveda which are equivalently becoming popular as a non- surgical treatment for various ailments among the foreign patients (Kaur, 2014).Health care turned out to be the prominent and largest service sector with presumed GDP to be spent of 12 percent by 2016 from 8 percent in 2011 (Deloitte Development LLC , 2015). Table 2 depicts the percentage of foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) in India for medical treatment from the year 2011 to 2014 which focuses primarily on Middle East, Japan, ASEAN (Association of South east Asian Nations), USA, Australia and then comes with Nigerian and African countries due to the affordable and inexpensive costs of medical services when compared with costs in United States it is approximately 30% to 70% lower in price, and also the proportion of the population older than 60 years compared to the total population is increasing finely(the Richest, 2015) .The highest percentage of FTA’s for medical treatment to India was in year 2012 followed by 2014 (Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management (IITTM), 2014).
Table 2: Foreign Tourists Arrivals in India for medical treatment (2011-2014)
Year No. FTAs in India
(person)
Percentage of FTA for
medical treatment
Estimated Revenue(dollars) Medical tourists by nationality
