The Factors Impacting on the Management of Global Medical Tourism Service Supply Chain

Abstract

Global medical tourism service (GMTS) supply chain is fast gaining momentum, and relationships between its participants, including patients, are increasingly becoming complex and subject to dynamic change. Medical tourism service in developing countries has emerged as a niche segment of the tourism industry, despite the global economic downturn. The GMTS supply chain is driven by an increasing accessibility of quality healthcare services, and low healthcare costs in developing countries. Many factors such as low cost, government’s role, and private investments have contributed to a significant growth in the medical tourism service market in countries such as, Thailand, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Poland, Austria and Saudi Arabia. This article is motivated by the lack of available supply of cost effective, timely and private medical services in developed economies and the need to understand the predictable nature of demand drivers of medical tourism to developing countries. We then, consider conceptualizing cost, waiting time and privacy as important characteristics upstream and downstream the global medical supply chain links. The authors of this article consider that as medical tourism product is similar to a consumer product in supply chain management, to a certain extent, many of the operations objectives found in a manufacturing supply chain can also be readily applicable to the medical tourism supply chain. We propose and test a model that is founded on three supply chain related constructs—cost, waiting time and privacy to inform the demand and also to ensure the smooth flow between the supply chain links for global medical service.