Position of Medical Tourism in Service Integration and Destination Competitiveness: Evaluating the Barriers and Compiling the Strategies (A Case Study of Health Macro-region NO.10- Tehran)

 Present study aimed to evaluate the barriers to medical tourism development in Tehran and compile the respective perspectives to attract more medical tourists, taking the service integration approach. 

 This is an exploratory study with qualitative and quantitative mixed methods. The statistical population consisted of a group of 8 people and 20 professors and experts in the health tourism field selected using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Furthermore, questionnaires and interview tools were used. For data analysis, MAXQDA 18 software was used for the qualitative method, and multi-criteria decision-making techniques in fuzzy DEMATEL, AHP, and SWOT model for the quantitative method. 

 According to the findings, seven factors, 11 indicators, and 45 sub-    indicators were identified as the challenges of medical tourism development in Tehran. Further, while delineating their interrelationships, the possible role of each of these indicators/ sub-indicators as barriers to Tehran becoming the sustainable medical tourism pole in the region and Asia was analyzed. Infrastructure and regulations (0.177), access to information (0.16), communication and marketing (0.152), quality (0.134), environmental factors (0.129), passive defense, and international obstacles (0.124) had the highest effect, respectively. 

 Weak regulatory management policies, lack of appropriate legal and financial infrastructure to support foreign patients and encourage active hospitals, lack of transparency in treatment costs, lack of a reliable system for price standardization and transparency, lack of transparent and practical programs to enter this domain and compete, and ignoring the potential of neighbors are among the main challenges faced by Iran and Tehran in the medical tourism field. Thus, to strengthen Tehran’s transnational roles, the government has a crucial function through policy-making and initiatives for tourism destination attractiveness and efficient infrastructure to realize improved international competitiveness, modern marketing, and coordination and comprehensiveness of services provided to these patients.