Medical tourism: Sustainability of Health Care Industry in Malaysia

Medical tourism as a revenue generating industry for destination countries (Johnston, Crooks, Snyder, & Kingsbury, 2010) and as a progressive vehicle to diversify nations economics. Governments of India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines are attracting foreign investment, promoting job opportunities, building the health services industry using regional strength to benefit from the doctrine of competitive advantage (Turner, 2007). Therefore, various countries are competing on different market segment by specializing in different market niches based on the availability of resources and trade opportunities in the country (Cattaneo, 2009). During the Asia Financial Crisis in 1997, Malaysia's healthcare industry particularly the private healthcare sector with the encouragement from the government started promoting medical tourism industry in the country. Looking into this scenario, the purpose of the study is to identify factors that contribute to the sustainability of medical tourism industry in Malaysia through customer satisfaction from the aspects of pricing strategies, medical care and medical practices. Pricing strategies will be examined from the view of lower cost medical procedures, cheaper hospitals charges, lower travel and accommodation cost for patients and family with affordable air travel. Meanwhile, medical care will be analyzed by quality medical care by physicians, personalized care by nurses and support services, customer services, communication, transportation, admission and discharge procedures, care during recuperation period, quality accreditation and waiting hours. Whereas medical practices will be observed through pre-appointment with doctors, treatments success rate, ethics in medical treatment especially in transplant tourism and reproductive tourism and continuity of care after treatment. The main implication of the study is focused towards the management of healthcare centers to sustain competitive advantage in the medical tourism industry in terms of customer satisfaction through available resources.