Designing and Validating a Medical Tourism Model among Doctors and Staff of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences in 2022: A Descriptive Study

Limitations of foreign exchange resources have caused the medical tourism industry to gain special importance. Based on this, the current research was conducted with the aim of designing and validating a model of medical tourism in two qualitative and quantitative stages.

This research is exploratory in terms of purpose and descriptive in terms of type. The contributors in the qualitative stage were 30 doctors in Ardabil Province in 2022, who were purposively selected by chain referral sampling; and in the second stage, based on the Morgan table, 201 employees working in the University of Medical Sciences were selected. In the qualitative phase, the data collection tool was a semi-structured interview that was conducted using Delphi method, and in the quantitative stage, the redesigned questionnaire resulting from the first stage and the structural equation modeling was used.

Based on the findings, the following components were identified as the components effective on medical tourism: economic growth (β=0.433), entrepreneurial ecosystem (β=0.537), quality of laws (β=0.437), social networks (β=0.346), challenges (β=0.482), diversity of attractions and leisure opportunities (β=0.539), expert workforce (β=0.345), development of tourism policies (β=0.742), respect for opinions (β=0.339), sustainable income (β=0.407), Islamic medical services (β=0.369), effectiveness and efficiency (β=0.454), participation (β=0.608), common language (β=0.523), medical infrastructure (β=0.427), costs (β=0.384), natural capacities (β=0.375), and medical services tariff (β=0.517).

Developing tourism policies and having roadmap have significant contributions to the development of medical tourism. Increasing public participation, creating related jobs, introducing tourist attractions, economic liberalization, and improving political relations and visa regulations are effective cross-sectorial policies.