Health-O-Scan

Health-O-Scan: Mapping Health Tourism Readiness

 

The Health Tourism Readiness Mapping Tool has two main objectives:
1. It evaluates the readiness both individual providers, e.g. hospitals and/or resorts as well as the destination organizations by looking at key elements of preparedness, e.g. capacities, specialities, doctors, natural resources, support services, accreditation.
2. It identifies strengths and weakness of individual providers and the relevant destination organizations to better understand where they should be focusing their resources and efforts should they wish to enter/develop health, medical and/or wellness travel.

The tool has 16 modules. The aim is to gather information about the destination’s support, governance and management structure, capacities, resources, marketing efforts and expectations. The Health Tourism Readiness tool as destination level tool needs to be used together with the Medical and/or the Wellness Tourism Readiness Tool. These facility-level mapping tools complement the findings of the destination-level review. Destinations may not be able to enter the health, medical or wellness tourism market without a strong operator-base.

The mapping modules are as follows:

    1. Healthcare and Wellness Infrastructure
    2. Tourism and Leisure Infrastructure
    3. Natural & Cultural Resources in Health and Wellbeing
    4. Hospital/Clinic Capacity
    5. Accommodation Capacity
    6. Accreditation & Certification
    7. Tourism and Visitor Mix
    8. Inpatient and Outpatient Admissions (National and International)
    9. Guest Motivation
    10. Organizational Capacities & Activities
    11. Benchmark
    12. Performance Monitoring
    13. Marketing/Communication Practices – events, specialist website, app
    14. Concerns and Challenges
    15. Rationale of International Health Tourism Plans
    16. Expectations

This mapping tool has all the questions that a destination organization interested in international medical and/or wellness tourism should consider. Answering those questions helps the organization to fine-tune and develop its services to make the destination (more) competitive and successful.

The initial output visualises the findings on a Not Prepared – Well Prepared scale according to eight dimensions of preparedness:

    1. Infrastructure & Technology Preparedness
    2. Organizational Preparedness
    3. Marketing/ Brand Preparedness
    4. Cost of Further Developments
    5. Risks of Development
    6. Contribution to Guest Volume
    7. Contribution to Community’s Quality of Life & Wellbeing
    8. Contribution to Value Generation
    9. Competitive Value Proposition

     

  2. The detailed result of the review is the Health Tourism Preparedness Heatmap. See more details about the Heatmap here. The Heatmap highlights the key investments and development required to make the hospital/clinic competitive in international health tourism market.