The perceptions regarding healthcare services of patients who received services within the scope of medical tourism: A research in private hospitals in Istanbul

Countries and healthcare businesses conduct intense investigations and investments to increase their share in the medical tourism sector, which has an important position in health tourism, in the competitive environment that is boosted when medical tourism became an attractive sector. In addition to this, it is becoming more and more important for healthcare businesses to measure the perceptions of patients regarding the healthcare services they receive, to predict and meet the patients' wishes and expectations. Moreover, it is considered that the perception of qualification for treatment services offered to the patient and patient satisfaction may be related to each other. From this point of view, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship of the perception of medical patients who travel to Turkey within scope of medical tourism on general qualification regarding the treatment services they receive and their general satisfaction and whether deviations according to demographics are significant or not. Accordingly, 447 medical patients are enrolled who presented to private businesses in Istanbul and its districts within scope of medical tourism. Survey method is used to collect the study data. Unpaired T test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson's correlation analysis are used to analyze the data. The study demonstrated that general perception of medical patients on qualification of healthcare services they receive and their overall satisfaction vary significantly according to gender, age, educational status, total monthly income, coverage of insurance policy, nationality, the reason to prefer a certain region and the route of referral to the healthcare facility. Moreover, there is no significant relation between the overall satisfaction for medical tourism services and the regional sufficiency, but a significantly positive correlation is noted between the general perception on sufficiency of healthcare services and perception on sufficiency of accommodation facilities, sufficiency of healthcare services, sufficiency of safety and sufficiency of additional services. According to these results, patients' satisfaction is in direct proportion to the qualification of medical tourism services they receive. Additionally, considering the factors that will increase the satisfaction level of patients will be very important for the patients to make them choose our country and the healthcare business again for the next treatment and recommend it to their relatives. Moreover, it is also very important for the contribution to our country's position to compete in the international market and for the development and vision of medical tourism.