MEDICAL TOURISM NEW DIRECTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES: MACROECONOMIC AND REGIONAL ASPECTS

Abstract

Introduction. Medical tourism involves obtaining medical services on an affordable basis outside the country of residence of the potential consumer of such services with maximum efficiency. For Ukraine, medical tourism has not been institutionalized, this area of health care is insufficiently monitored at the macroeconomic level, there are no state programs to support the development of medical tourism, no system of accounting for revenues from foreign consumers of medical tourism services, while the latter low prices and fairly high quality. Moreover, the prospects of medical tourism for Ukraine can best be realized in the regions of Ukraine.

Goal. substantiation of prospects for the development of medical tourism as a priority area for public policy in the field of health care.

Research methods. Methods of comparative, systematic, structural analysis, and generalization are used.

Results. Scientific, organizational, and legal bases of medical tourism development as a tool of competitive positioning of the domestic health care system in the global environment are substantiated. The traditional and newest components of medical tourism are identified and analyzed: diagnostics, treatment, rehabilitation, and rehabilitation. Prospects for the development of the domestic system of medical tourism based on regional recreational potential, international standards of quality of medical services, institutional framework, based program mechanisms of state support for individual actors in the medical tourism market, and regional clusters working in this sphere. The domestic and international potential of medical tourism is analyzed, and the advantages and prospects in the formation and development of medical tourism at the regional level are substantiated under the conditions of appropriate legal support and program support. The conditions for obtaining international quality certificates by medical tourism entities as a prerequisite for their competitive positioning in the international market of medical services are substantiated.

The main provisions of the scientific article will contribute to the formation of an organizational, legal, marketing, and logistical basis for the development of an inclusive-oriented, competitive model of the market of medical tourism services.