THE INCREASING TREND OF MEDICAL TOURIST FROM NORTH SUMATERA TO MALAYSIA: ANALYSIS ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS

It is MacReady (2007) who believed that there will be an up in the trend of medical tourism, this industry will grow about 20% worldwide. This could happen because of the socioe-conomic factors that support this condition. As reported by SERI (2004), Leng (2006) and Tourism Malaysia (2010), Indonesian patients have been the largest foreign patients visited Malaysia. This trend is interesting to learn further and this study aims at finding out the macroeconomic factors which have influenced the numbers of people from North Sumatera seeking for medical treatment in Malaysia. Using secondary data, this survey study has regressed the number of North Sumatran medical tourist (as the dependent variable) for the period of 2000-2011 to the independent variables such as exchange rate, inflation and income per capita in order to find out the economic determinant of number of medical tourists from North Sumatera. The demographic determinant choosen to study as the only independent variable is population for the same period of study. Finally, in order to incorporate the health seeking behavior point of view, this study used independent variables such as life expectancy, health facilities, number of doctors and level of education as the determinant for the number of medical tourists from North Sumatera. The result of regression for economic determinant showed that income and exchange rate were positively and statistically significant determinant for the number of medical tourists while the independent variable of inflation is not responsive to the changes in the dependent variable of number of medical tourist. The result of single regression of the independent variable of population was found significantly and positively to have affected the number of medical tourist. From four of the health seeking behaviours as dependent variables, it is found that life expectancy and the number of health facilities was responsive to the changes of the number of medical tourist while the number of doctors and level of education was not.

Keywords:

medical tourism demand determinant, health seeking behavior,

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