ABSTRACT
To date, the literature on medical tourism has focused almost exclusively on international medical tourism, or medical services outsourced to other countries. However, there are a growing number of patients who travel for medical care within their own country. Medical tourism experts have suggested that competition introduced from abroad, combined with healthcare reform, may stimulate improvement in healthcare offerings in the United States, and lead to an increase in such medical tourism. This chapter extends the literature by examining domestic medical tourism in the United States. There is a scarcity of research investigating consumer attitudes and beliefs toward the concept of medical tourism, particularly for domestic medical tourism—so the authors present a new model, and a research agenda for studying both attitudes toward such tourism, as well as the potential impact of domestic medical tourism on regional economies in the United States.
