Determining the reasons of preferring Ankara for medical tourism and assesing the satisfaction degree of the patients from abroad: A survey study among the healthcare organizations

The aim of this study is determining the prefering motives of the patients from other cities come to hospitals affiliated to Ministery of Health for inpatient treatment and assesing the patients satisfaction level, and in this context, evaluating how these hospitals gets more portion from medical tourism which have been an important source of income for our country.The population of the survey is the inpatients who dwell outside Ankara province and undergoing a treatment in hospitals affiliated to Ministery of Health in Ankara. Sample is the inpatients which are conducted questionnaire in the hospitals selected by experts view.Questionnaire technique is used for data collecting in this survey. Two types of questionnaire are formed, one of which (Reasons for Choice, Appendix-1) is composed of 23 questions, and the other (Satisfaction Questionnaire, Appendix-2) 17 questions. Questionnaires are conducted to randomly selected inpatients receiving a treatment in the hospitals choosen by experts views in May 2011 with permissions of the competent authorities.SPPS software is used for analyzing.According to the results of the study, overally, patients are pleased with the treatments and general conditions of hospitals in Ankara province.As a conclusion, for improvement of the medical tourism in our country, government should work with private hospitals, be supportive in field of advertising and marketing and generally pay importance to accreditation of hospitals. Furthermore, it should be taken into account that opening of the govermental hospitals to the medical tourism (after determining and overcoming the deficiencies of these hopitals) will make a major contribute to tourism of our country.Key Words: Health Tourism, Medical Tourism