Discuss about the Services Provided to Individuals by Medical Tourism.
Medical tourism refers to seeking treatment overseas. They may come in combination with recreational experiences in hotels and resorts. Treatments consist of in-vitro fertilization, tissue and organ transplantation, chronic illness, cosmetic procedures, dental, bariatric and orthopedic surgery (Lunt et al., 2011). Healthcare has thus, become a commodity that can be obtained by the consumers locally as well as in foreign nations. The value of the industry on a global scale is valued to be US$ 20 billion (Runnels & Carrera, 2012). Medical tourism in Australia is a dimension of health care that is constantly growing, with inward-bound as well as out-ward bound consumers. Active promotion of medical tourism is taking place in the country now-a-days (Greenfield & Pawsey, 2014). In light of these facts, this study will focus on the services that are being provided to individuals by medical tourism.
This research aims to through light on the services provided by medical tourism to individuals. Hence, the emphasis of the study will be on determining the features providing motivation to people for taking up medical tourism, aspect of information search along with the factors impacting it for medical tourists and evaluation process for alternative tourism destination.
The issue of research that is being proposed has to be investigated for finding out the services that are being provided to individuals by medical tourism in Australia and what are the factors that motivate individuals to take up medical tourism, the ways in which they search for information and evaluate the alternatives available for medical tourism. This information will help to improve medical tourism services in Australia.
The delimitation for this study will be the representatives of the organizations in New South Wales province of Australia which are either affected by interested in medical tourism services.
The section of literature review will be taking into account the reasons for increase in medical tourism worldwide, reasons for it and demand, supply and opportunities available in this sector in Australia and its implications.
In the previous two decades, various forces have led to increase in medical travel which include rise in healthcare costs in industrialised nations, variations in accessibility and quality of health services, advancements in IT which have eased the access to knowledge and information, low costs of transport, reduction in language barriers and liberalisation of trade (Helble, 2011). An increasing number of nations are also investigating the potential economic benefits as well as the costs of public health of medical tourism (Smith et al., 2009).
The primary reasons for people travelling outside their nation are mostly the medical treatment of superior quality along with care and better technology that the other country offers. The respondents belonging to the USA also indicated that cost is a vital driver for surgeries while the Canadians indicated that long queues for necessary care as the main reason (Deloitte , 2011).
Nations from across the world are turning into destinations for medical tourism. Certain nations like Germany have captured the market by building a reputation of providing offerings of high quality while others like Thailand by providing luxurious accommodation along with medical treatment at low prices. The major region that receives medical tourists is Asia (Ehrbeck et al., 2008).
The main drivers for Australia as a destination of medical tourism include the relative cost that health services in Australia have, availability of services of high quality, surgeries or drugs unavailable in other nations, Australia’s reputation as a safe medical tourism destination, income levels and rate of exchange, rules and regulations pertaining to migration or visas for medical treatment, proximity of Australia to rapidly growing Asian nations. The demand for Australia as a destination of medical tourism is also dependent on the relative services that other nations offer along with consumer preferences both of which create competition (Helble, 2011).
The overseas medical travellers may directly enquire with the providers and then organise all the steps of the supply chain themselves. A medical tourism facilitator might also organise or provide assistance in organising at all the steps of the supply chain (Deolitte, 2011).
Australia’s medical tourism sector is very small in comparison to the country’s entire tourism sector and the average numbers of medical travelers significantly vary across providers as well as facilitators of medical tourism (Deolitte, 2011).
The potential benefits comprise bringing in foreign currencies and investments into Australia, reduction in external brain drain of the professionals of medicine, reinvestments in the healthcare system locally and benefits for the industry of tourism (Constantinides, 2009).
The potential risks include brain drain internally to the private sector from the public sector and rising healthcare costs (Sengupta, 2011).
Conclusion
Most of the observations in the literature that currently exists indicate the implications, demand, supply and opportunities of medical tourism. However, shortage of literature is there on the services, the motivating factors for individuals to take up medical tourism, information that they look for related to medical tourism and criteria of evaluation of alternative destination by them. This study will be making an attempt of addressing this gap which exists in literature.
A perspective having a set of assumptions, values, concepts as well as practices that are shared is known as a research paradigm (Johnson & Christensen, 2010). The views that the researcher has with respect to knowledge development facilitate to carry out the study in a manner which is effective. Positivism, interpretevism along with realism philosophies of research comprises the research paradigm.
The most appropriate paradigm for the current study is the interpretivist paradigm. Such a type of research paradigm also places emphasis on the contents of the data and the way they are produced by making use of the practices of language (Collins, 2010). The reason for this is that it is very descriptive and applies a thinking of critical nature. The emphasis of interpretivism is to explore the research topic and with an increase in the number of explorations in relation to the topic, the findings will also increase. This will result in more interpretations of the differing types of activities as well as occurrences which are related to the topic being studied (Cryer, 2006).
A research that is conducted can either be an inductive one or it can be deductive. When the research that is conducted is inductive in nature, it brings out the theory from the outcome that is derived from the research study. However, if case the research happens to be deductive in nature, it becomes a top-down approach in which hypothesis is derived from the theory (Saunders et al., 2007). In this research, the researcher will be making observations on the basis of the hypotheses after which the confirmation of the postulates of the theory will take place. Hence, the study will be using an approach that is deductive in nature and the outcomes which will be derived from the study will be making further additions to the knowledge which already present in relation to the services provided by medical tourism to individuals.
Figure 1: Deductive Research Approach
Medical Tourism is described as a process wherein the patients travel abroad for the purposes of medical care as well as procedures mainly due to the reason that some of the medical procedures are either unaffordable or unavailable in their own nations (Voigt et al., 2010). Medical tourism includes medical travelers and medical tourists. Medical travelers are the people who travel abroad for orthopedic treatment or complex surgeries like cardiac surgeries while medical tourists are the people travelling abroad in addition to a planned vacation mainly for treatments that are elective like fertility treatment or cosmetic surgery. In this study both the terms will be used synonymously and refer to both the groups of medical tourists travelling to Australia for treatment purposes.
The use of qualitative research will be made in order to collect data for the present study. The method of qualitative research comprises data collection and its use is made for providing description of the differing aspects. However, there is lack of focus on inferences that are drawn statistically (Björklund & Paulsson, 2012). Such a type of analysis will provide assistance to the researcher in making observations for comprehending the collected data (Ghauri & Grönhaug, 2005). Such a type of research is being used for this research as it is of interpretative nature with regards to the services that are being provided to individuals by medical tourism. The nature of qualitative research also focuses on description and is also exploratory. The design will thus be emergent and not a fixed one. It will also provide the researcher increased flexibility in the collection of data under natural conditions (Creswell, 2003). Both primary and secondary data will be collected for the research.
Being an exploratory study, it will be focused on figuring out the things that are occurring. New insights will also be looked into and new questions will be presented. The phenomenon used for the purpose of analysis will also be new (Robson, 2002). This can be justified because it will be providing assistance in conducting a further analysis of the services which medical tourism offers to the individuals.
In order to reach the research question, the plan that is made use of is the research strategy (Neuman, 2004). For collecting data for the study, the strategy that will be utilized will be conducting an interview of the stakeholders who are representatives of organizations who are either affected by or interested in medical tourism in NSW Australia. The identification of the organisations will be done by the project team possessing firsthand knowledge related to the industry, internet searches, mass media and also snowball sampling.
The questions for the survey will be same for all the participants. An email will be sent to the participants first informing them about the survey and for taking their approval for the same and then after taking an appointment, face-to-face interviews will be conducted.
The main issues that are being researched are the features motivating people towards medical tourism, prospective medical tourists aspects of information search and factors impacting and evaluation process for alternative destinations. In order to fulfill these research objectives, qualitative data is needed. Such type of data can be obtained by conducting interviews of the people who are working in well-known organizations that provide the individuals with medical tourism. Responses from the stakeholders are crucial for attaining the research objectives since they have a legitimate interest in the results of the study.
The researcher will be collecting the required data from the stakeholders who are representatives of the organizations in NSW, Australia that are either affected by or interested in medical tourism.
Open ended questionnaire will be utilized in order to collect primary data from the respondents. The questionnaire used for conducting the interviews will be a semi-structured one. This will facilitate collection of the data that is relevant for the study. Five organizations will be selected for this study and two representatives from each organization will be interviewed for the study.
The open-ended questionnaire will comprise eight questions. The use of this informal questionnaire will help in collecting primary data which will be of top class quality with high degree of relevance (Adler & Clark, 2011). Apart from this, the “formalized set of questions” that are questionnaire as an instrument of interview presents helps in obtaining answers from the respondents who have been selected (Malhotra, 2011).
Reliable sources like refereed proceedings of the conferences, publications, academic journals, research theses, scholarly textbooks along with reports will be used for collecting secondary data.
The population’s subset which has been chosen to participate in the research is referred to as the sample while the sample size signifies the number of respondents that make up the sample (Saunders et al., 2009). To select the respondents snowball sampling will be used as it is not possible to include the whole population for the purpose of conducting the study. Non-probability sampling technique will be adopted as the researcher will be choosing the participants wherein a stakeholder will be providing contact details related to another potential stakeholder (Jennings, 2001). In all, ten representatives will be interviewed. This size of the sample is necessary for obtaining the general trend in the medical tourism services and also for attaining the objectives of research.
The reliability as well as the authenticity of the sources will determine the selection of secondary data.
The analysis of the collected data will be done based on the responses that have been obtained from the stakeholders through the interviews. The stakeholders will be responding to the various questions and on the basis of those responses, the organization of the data will be done. Then content analysis will be used. It comprises examining the texts like transcripts of interview to find out the meanings (Krippendorf, 2004). The content analysis adopted was conventional where themes were directly derived from the data of the text (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The secondary data that will be collected for the study will also be qualitative so that it is easier to compare the primary data with it and find out the areas that are similar and also the areas that vary.
It is crucial to take into account the ethical considerations when a study of this nature is carried out. The respondents will be given proper explanations pertaining to the study and they will also be informed about the purpose as well as the benefits of carrying out such a research. Consent of every single participant will be taken for taking part in the study. Under all circumstances, the individuality of the participants will be maintained. They responses will be highly valued and care will be taken not to misinterpret the response that they will be providing. A high degree of confidentiality will be maintained of the responses that the stakeholders will be providing and the researcher will make sure that the data is used solely for the purposes of academic nature.
Since the timeframe for collecting the data is limited, the size of the sample that has been taken is limited. The secondary data is also limited because the main focus of the existing research is on the aspect of safety as well as quality of healthcare that is available to Australian consumers abroad, the reasons why Australian medical tourists go abroad, implications that medical tourism has along with the demand, supply and opportunities which exist but focus on services specifically and the factors motivating people to engage in medical tourism, information that is searched by the prospective medical tourists and factors that have an influence on it and evaluation process of the alternative destination for such tourism are limited and this can result in posing a challenge as far as collection of secondary data is concerned. Hence there are chances of variations in the accuracy of the research.
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