台灣醫療觀光發展之探討

A Study of Medical Tourism Development in Taiwan

醫療觀光是以醫療護理、疾病與健康、康復與修養為主題的觀光旅遊服務。本研究乃針對台灣醫療觀光發展的現況與相關問題做一初步探討。首先藉由現有資料敘述分析醫療觀光發展概況；進而分別對政府相關官員、學者、醫療業者以及觀光業者就有關醫療觀光發展的問題進行深度訪談，訪談資料使用NVivo軟體加以整理分析。由研究結果發現發展醫療具有多重意義與目標，包括（1）推展整體經濟效益：醫療觀光能同時提升醫療和觀光產業發展，創造產值；（2）推動醫療服務產業化：推動服務業發展是整體經濟發展的下一個目標，發展醫療觀光能使醫療朝產業化發展；（3）藉由觀光推動醫療服務國際化：發展醫療觀光可以促進醫療服務國際間的交流；（4）透過醫療發展觀光：藉由治療國際患者吸引觀光客以繁榮整體經濟活動。分析結果並顯示相關業者對發展醫療觀光的意願以醫療要者較觀光業者為高。本研究建議未來要發展醫療觀光應將相關行業加以整合，並凸顯台灣醫療觀光的特色。

Medical tourism is defined as a business to take medical care, disease and health control, recovery and recreation as the subject of trip. This study focuses on the current development and possible difficulties of medical tourism in Taiwan. First, we summarized the current situation of medical tourism in Taiwan using available information. Second, we performed in-depth interviews with government officials, scholars, medical entrepreneurs and tourism entrepreneurs; we then analyzed interview data using NVivo software. Through this study, we found several benefits of developing medical tourism in Taiwan, including: (1) Improvement of the whole economy: medical tourism will have beneficial effects on both medical service and tourism industry; (2) Boost of medical service industry: medical tourism will increase the output of medical service industry; (3) Internationalization of medical service: medical tourism can promote internalization of our medical service industry; and (4) Benefits for the tourism industry: medical tourism will attract international patients and therefore helps the tourism industry. Survey data also indicates that medical entrepreneurs have stronger willingness to develop medical tourism than the tourism entrepreneurs. Our study suggests that in order to develop medical tourism in Taiwan, it is necessary to integrate various related industries and build up attractive characteristics in the future.