Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? A critical content analysis on medical tourism

Investigation of two areas of medical tourism found commonalities in the identification of significant attributes of medical services received by respondents and their evaluations of cost, treatment effectiveness, and the time spent collecting healthcare information, as well as the recommendations they plan to make to friends and family.

Abstract

Medical tourism continues to grow as the Internet helps individuals make appropriate choices and informed decisions. This study investigated two areas of medical tourism: cosmetic and dental procedures. The post-procedural experiences of 603 respondents who were medical tourists originating from different countries between 2008 and 2016 were analyzed using Leximancer software. The findings indicate commonalities in the identification of significant attributes of medical services received by respondents and their evaluations of cost, treatment effectiveness, and the time spent collecting healthcare information, as well as the recommendations they plan to make to friends and family. Further analyses showed that people who have undergone cosmetic surgery and dentistry use the same narratives to represent their medical experiences, although gender is an influential factor in how individuals evaluate different attributes of treatments.