Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UK.
Policy Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Engineering, Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Front Public Health. 2016 Jan 25;3:284. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2015.00284. eCollection 2015.
Increased access to transportation and information has led to the emergence of more diverse patient choice and new forms of health care consumption, such as medical travel. In order for health care providers to effectively attract patients, more knowledge is needed on the mechanisms underlying decision-making of potential travelers from different countries. A particularly promising method of studying the travelers' motives is collecting data on social media.
The aim of this study was to test what factors influence decision-making of potential medical travelers and how these factors interact. Based on existing literature, the factors analyzed included quality, cost, and waiting time for 2 procedures varying in invasiveness across 12 different destination countries.
Decision-making patterns were examined using a pilot questionnaire that generated a large amount of data from over 800 participants in 40 countries. Participants indicated their willingness to travel given different scenarios. Each scenario consisted of a combination of several factors. Additionally, participants were asked to indicate the reasons for their choice.
Individuals display high willingness to travel for medical care when combining all participants and scenarios, travel for care was chosen 66.9% of the time. Among the factors influencing their decisions, quality of the medical procedure abroad was considered most important, and cost was least important as shown by chi-square tests and corresponding odds ratios. Log-linear analyses revealed an interaction between time waiting in the local health care system and type of procedure, whereby time pressure increased the odds of agreeing to travel for the more invasive procedure. The odds of traveling to Europe and the USA were by far the highest, although participants indicated that under certain conditions they might be willing to travel to other medical destinations, such as Asia.
Our measurements yielded several reliable insights into the factors driving medical decision-making. An essential next step would be to expand these findings with a more encompassing sample and more elaborate statistical modeling.
交通和信息的获取增加导致患者的选择更加多样化，出现了医疗旅游等新的医疗消费形式。为了让医疗服务提供者能够有效地吸引患者，需要更多地了解来自不同国家的潜在旅行者的决策机制。收集社交媒体上的数据是研究旅行者动机的一种很有前途的方法。
本研究旨在检验哪些因素影响潜在医疗旅行者的决策，以及这些因素如何相互作用。基于现有文献，分析的因素包括 12 个不同目的地国家的 2 种不同侵入性手术的质量、成本和等待时间。
使用试点问卷检查决策模式，该问卷从 40 个国家的 800 多名参与者中产生了大量数据。参与者根据不同的情况表示愿意旅行的意愿。每个方案由几个因素的组合组成。此外，还要求参与者说明选择的原因。
当结合所有参与者和方案时，个人对医疗旅游表现出很高的意愿，有 66.9%的人选择出国就医。在影响他们决策的因素中，国外医疗程序的质量被认为是最重要的，而成本则是最不重要的，这一点通过卡方检验和相应的优势比得到了证明。对数线性分析显示，在当地医疗系统中等待时间和手术类型之间存在交互作用，即时间压力增加了同意接受更侵入性手术的几率。到欧洲和美国旅行的几率是迄今为止最高的，尽管参与者表示，在某些情况下，他们可能愿意前往其他医疗目的地，如亚洲。
我们的测量结果对推动医疗决策的因素有了一些可靠的了解。下一步将是用更全面的样本和更精细的统计建模来扩展这些发现。
