Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Global Health. 2012 Jul 7;8:23. doi: 10.1186/1744-8603-8-23.
Medical tourism describes the private purchase and arrangement of medical care by patients across international borders. Increasing numbers of medical facilities in countries around the world are marketing their services to a receptive audience of international patients, a phenomenon that has largely been made possible by the growth of the Internet. The growth of the medical tourism industry has raised numerous concerns around patient safety and global health equity. In spite of these concerns, there is a lack of empirical research amongst medical tourism stakeholders. One such gap is a lack of engagement with medical tourists themselves, where there is currently little known about how medical tourists decide to access care abroad. We address this gap through examining aspects of Canadian medical tourists' decision-making processes.
Semi-structured phone interviews were administered to 32 Canadians who had gone abroad as medical tourists. Interviews touched on motivations, assessment of risks, information seeking processes, and experiences at home and abroad. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts followed.
Three overarching themes emerged from the interviews: (1) information sources consulted; (2) motivations, considerations, and timing; and (3) personal and professional supports drawn upon. Patient testimonials and word of mouth connections amongst former medical tourists were accessed and relied upon more readily than the advice of family physicians. Neutral, third-party information sources were limited, which resulted in participants also relying on medical tourism facilitators and industry websites.
While Canadian medical tourists are often thought to be motivated by wait times for surgery, cost and availability of procedures were common primary and secondary motivations for participants, demonstrating that motivations are layered and dynamic. The findings of this analysis offer a number of important factors that should be considered in the development of informational interventions targeting medical tourists. It is likely that trends observed amongst Canadian medical tourists apply to those from other nations due to the key role the transnational medium of the Internet plays in facilitating patients' private international medical travel.
医疗旅游是指患者跨境私人购买和安排医疗服务。世界上越来越多的医疗设施正在向国际患者群体推销其服务，这种现象在很大程度上得益于互联网的发展。医疗旅游行业的增长引发了许多关于患者安全和全球卫生公平性的担忧。尽管存在这些担忧，但在医疗旅游利益相关者中缺乏实证研究。其中一个差距是缺乏与医疗游客本身的接触，目前对医疗游客如何决定在国外获得医疗服务知之甚少。我们通过检查加拿大医疗游客决策过程的各个方面来解决这一差距。
对 32 名前往国外接受医疗旅游的加拿大人进行了半结构化电话访谈。访谈内容涉及动机、风险评估、信息搜索过程以及国内外的体验。随后对访谈记录进行了主题分析。
访谈中出现了三个总体主题：（1）咨询的信息来源；（2）动机、考虑因素和时机；（3）利用的个人和专业支持。患者的见证和前医疗游客之间的口碑联系更容易被获取和依赖，而不是家庭医生的建议。中立的第三方信息来源有限，这导致参与者也依赖医疗旅游中介和行业网站。
尽管加拿大医疗游客通常被认为是出于手术等待时间的原因，但费用和手术的可及性是参与者的主要和次要动机，这表明动机是多层次和动态的。该分析的结果提供了一些重要因素，这些因素应在针对医疗游客的信息干预措施的制定中加以考虑。由于互联网这一跨国媒介在促进患者私人国际医疗旅行方面发挥着关键作用，因此观察到的加拿大医疗游客的趋势可能适用于其他国家的医疗游客。
