A Theoretical Model on Medical Tourism Destination and Quality Provision
Ipsita Das & Tanmoyee Banerjee
What the paper says
While empirical and conceptual studies highlight the interdependence of hospitals and allied firms in medical-tourism destinations, few offer theoretical models capturing this dimension. This study develops a model featuring two interdependent sectors: hospitals providing medical care and allied-firms offering complementary services (e.g., accommodation, food, transport) that support the stay of patients and their companions in the destination. We examine two market structures: a monopoly hospital providing homogeneous service quality and a vertically differentiated duopoly comprising high-quality and low-quality hospitals. Each structure is analyzed under two institutional settings: non-coordination, where hospitals independently set service-quality to maximize their own profits; and coordination, where a central planning-authority chooses quality levels to maximize joint sectoral profit. Results show a trade-off—coordination improves accessibility and allied-sector profits through lower medical service quality and prices, while non-coordination yields higher medical-service quality and greater profits for the hospital-sector but reduces demand and profitability of the allied-sector. Sensitivity analysis suggests that widening income-dispersion improves medical service-quality under monopoly, but may lower the quality levels under duopoly if the high-end hospital’s initial quality is sufficiently high. JEL Classifications: D42, D43, L83, Z320
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.