An integrated approach for service quality improvement in medical tourism: an Indian perspective

This paper attempts to develop a medical tourism service quality construct that will be used for evaluation of the medical tourism service providers in India. Cross‐sectional survey of medical tourists at seven hospitals including Joint Commission International (JCI) accredited and non‐accredited hospitals across India is carried out and 332 responses are collected from seven hospitals. The data were collected between March 2010 and June 2010. Analysis of data helps to propose a 36‐item scale. Ten dimensions of perceived medical tourism service quality are identified viz., accessibility/convenience, treatment satisfaction, courtesy, physical environment features, technical quality of care competency, promptness, facility premises, alternative therapy, finance factors for medical services and pharmaceutical services. Reliability, validity, and factor structure of the construct are evaluated. The interrelationship between medical tourism design requirements is identified using interpretative structural modelling (ISM). These aforesaid dimensions are treated as voice of customers (VoC) and 11 design requirements (medical tourism design requirements) from extensive literature review are treated as design requirement for employing quality function deployment (QFD) in order to prioritise the design requirements.