Research on key factors that influence Myanmar patients' intentions in choosing hospitals in Thailand as medical tourists

Abstract

Although medical tourism has been growing since the 1990s, people tend to be more interested in medical tourism once again after the post-Covid period for the sake of both travel and medical purposes. In Thailand, even the Thai government has been promoting medical tourism to boost the country’s economy after Covid. Thailand is one of the countries that Myanmar people like to choose when it comes to the medical tourism destination country. Myanmar people normally come to Thailand for medical purposes expecting to get better healthcare quality and service than their home country, Myanmar. Once Thailand reopens the country, there are many Myanmar medical tourists who come to Thailand to get medical treatment or check-ups. The objectives of the study are to examine the determinant factors that influence Myanmar patients to choose hospitals in Thailand as medical tourists, to understand the points that make Thailand famous for medical tourism among Myanmar patients, and lastly, to identify the gap between Myanmar and Thailand hospitals to implement the strengths in improving Myanmar to be one of the medical tourism destination countries in the future. In this study, Google Forms is used to collect data and the questionnaires are in a quantitative method based on the factors such as Affordability, Convenience, Quality of clinical care and services, Technical quality, Loyalty program, and Word-of-Mouth (WOM). A total of 159 participants responded to the survey and the mean score will be analyzed in detail and ranked as the top factors that influence Myanmar patients’ decisions in choosing hospitals in Thailand. This study will help to realize the customer’s behaviors to choose the hospital for medical tourism and will benefit the hospitals in Thailand to improve the facilities to attract more medical tourists.