Health tourism in Turkey: A comparison of countries

Health toursim is a type of tourism that allows health institutions to grow by using international patient potential together with patients who need physical therapy and rehabilitation. Health tourism aims to offer medical options to provide comfort for patients. In parallel with the high level of education and welfare in the developed countries, the provision of health services is also costly. In these countries the share of health needs and health expenditures of the aging population is constantly increasing. The constant increase in social security costs causes problem for social security institutions. In order to overcome these difficulties, social security institutions and private insurance institutions in developed countries are trying to get health services at low cost by making package agreements with geographically close countries offering high quality medical services. In recent years, tourists have come to Turkey from the developed countries especially for the purpose of treatment . Particularly the geographical location and low prices in health services create significant cost advantages for Turkey The main purpose of the research in this framework is to make a SWOT analysis to compare Turkey and some developed countries, over which Turkey has both geographical and significant cost advantage in the field of health tourism, and as a result, to show the possibilities of development in health tourism and its elements.