Investigating the Quality and Role of Medical Tourism Pages on the Websites of Iranian Hospitals on Improvement of the Iran’s MedicalTourism Industry

Introduction: Nowadays, virtual world is one of the most important and influential factors inthe field of marketing in the medical tourism industry. Receiving complete and transparentinformation for patients who are abroad, especially those who intend to travel to the destinationcountry for the first time, is very vital and can play a decisive role in choosing hospitals andmedical centers. This study aimed to investigate the quality and role of medical tourism pageson the websites of Iranian hospitals on the improvement of the Iran’s medical tourism industry.Method: In this cross-sectional study, the website quality of International Patients Department(IPD) of hospitals were scored by a ۳۶-item self-administrated checklist that were categorizedin three groups including information about hospital and services (۱۵ items), information aboutmedical tourism services (۱۲ items) and information on guidance for tourism in province (۸items). The correlation between the website quality score of IPDs in each section and totally inthe capital city of provinces with a high share of Iran’s medical tourism and the capital ofprovinces with a low share were assessed using SPSS software version ۲۲. In thisstudy, p < ۰.۰۵ was considered as the significant level.Result: Totally, ۱۰۰ IPDs were included to the study which ۱۰% did not have an Englishlanguagepage which were excluded from the study. The mean of overall quality score was۴۷ ± ۷.۵, demonstrating ۳۳% of achievable score. Quality score was lower in the websites ofpublic hospitals in comparison with private and semi-private ones. Also, website’s overallquality score of IPDs and information about hospital and its services had correlation with theirshare of national medical tourism (p value <۰.۰۵).Conclusion: According to the obtained results and the role of websites in increasing share ofmedical tourism, the websites of hospitals’ IPDs should be revised and patients’ necessaryinformation should be added to make them more informative.

کلیدواژه ها:

Website ، Medical Tourism ، Health Tourism ، Iran