Measuring Patient Satisfaction of Foreign Patients Receiving Services in Private Hospitals and Foundation University Hospitals

The tourism sector has been one of the important driving forces behind the economic development experienced in Turkey in recent years, thanks to the new employment opportunities it has created and the positive contribution it has made to the national income and balance of payments. This development that tourism has brought to the economy has subsequently led to an increase in interaction with alternative areas. Health tourism is one of the leading areas, especially because it is a high value-added and foreign exchange-earning service sector.The main purpose of the study is to measure the service quality in medical tourism and to examine the relationships between it and patient satisfaction. Especially with the developments in health tourism in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of tourists coming to Turkey for holiday in this concept. Turkey has become an important center in Europe in the field of health tourism due to both the service quality and the applied pricing policy. In this context, the main purpose of the study is to determine the relationships between the dimensions of service quality in medical tourism and the demographic characteristics of the patients. In the study, the importance-performance analysis method was used for measuring the service quality, and the surveys were conducted with the participation of patients applying to private hospitals and foundation university hospitals. This research, which was conducted with quantitative methods, was applied in 6 private Hospitals and 2 University hospitals, and data was collected from 427 patients using the survey technique.The survey results in our research show that health tourism patients in Turkey generally experience a high level of satisfaction. In particular, positive feedback was received in areas such as treatment services, hospital equipment and communication quality. Foreign patients from 24 countries participating in the research stated that they were highly satisfied with the medical services in hospitals, hospital equipment, communication of hospital staff (higher among Russian speakers than Arabic speakers) and hotel services they received.Turkey has competitive advantages in the world in terms of its health tourism-equipped facilities, trained human capacity, geographical location and the ability to provide services at affordable prices. This study only examined people who receive medical treatment. There is not enough work for thermal tourism, SPA tourism, and elderly tourism. Turkey does not yet have a sufficient share of the market in these tourism segments of health tourism. Therefore, the issue should be addressed with the coordination of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Tourism on health tourism and long-term strategies should be created.