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Through a questionnaire survey, the purpose of this paper is to understand and analyse the cognitions of medical service price of medical workers in various regions of China, and discuss the policy suggestions on the price dynamic adjustment of medical service.

The authors conducted a questionnaire survey on the cognition of medical service price medical workers in various regions of China, and then the grey relational analysis theory is used to analyse the data obtained from the questionnaire survey.

The investigation and analysis shows some cognitions of hospital workers on the price of medical services in various regions in China, the authors analyse the results of grey relational analysis and come up with suggestions for relevant departments.

Although a plenty of research on the current situation of medical service price cognition of China is discussed in the paper, it is not complete; thus, a large amount of information needs to be consulted further. The data obtained from the questionnaire are less used and the utilisation rate is lower, which may result in one-sided results and need further investigation.

Through the investigation and analysis, the authors can determine about the implementation of medical service prices in various parts of China from the perspective of hospital workers to a certain degree, and try to explore the relevant policy recommendations for the dynamic adjustment of medical service prices.

The price of medical services refers to the fees for registration, diagnosis, inspection, surgery, nursing and medicine. In a narrow sense, the price of medical services refers to the standard of charge for medical services except drugs. This paper mainly refers to the narrow sense. As one of the important means and methods for the government to control the medical service market, medical service price is also an important basis for the economic source of medical institutions. The adjustment of medical service price is related to the interests of all aspects of society.

Medical service price is an important basis for the economic source of medical institutions, the adjustment of medical service price is related to the interests of all aspects of society and it is a hot issue of social concern. Through the investigation and analysis, the authors use grey relational analysis to know about the medical service prices in various parts of China from the perspective of hospital workers to a certain degree, and try to explore the relevant policy recommendations for the dynamic adjustment of medical service prices.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the attitude of patients towards the current medical service price and the effect of policy implementation, and explore the existing problems of the current medical service price policy in the region in order to provide a research basis for the dynamic adjustment mechanism of the medical service price.

Literature analysis and expert interviews are used to design the questionnaire of the dynamic adjustment of medical service price formation mechanism. A convenient sampling method is used to extract data of 600 patients from the five areas, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, on-site to fill out the paper-based questionnaire and electronic questionnaire. The grey relational analysis is used to explore the difference in the attitudes of patients towards the price of the medical service. Combined with the research results and expert interview results, some improvement suggestions related to the current price policy of medical service in five areas are put forward.

The overall average score of respondents in the five areas, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, is found to be 3.861. In terms of surgical operation fee and examination fee, the average score is higher than 4, i.e. 4.097 and 4.011, respectively, indicating “relatively high” nodes. According to grey relevancy sorting, the correlation between the health service price attitude and the overall score in the five regions is in the following order: Shandong > Tianjin > Beijing > Liaoning > Hebei.

In this study, patients’ attitude towards the current price of medical services in their local areas, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, is investigated in order to explore the existing problems of medical service price reform and thus provide the basis for further improvement in the medical service price policy.

Following promising growth of the international medical tourism industry, competitions within the global market have escalated tremendously with increased involvement by numerous healthcare providers to acquire a share of its disposable income. The brand reputation would hereby play a determining role as a competitive strategy. Specifically, this paper aims to investigate the impact of social and marketing aspects on the brand image of medical tourism-based hospitals, alongside its relationship toward service quality. In turn, the influence of perceived service quality on satisfaction and the perceived value was examined, in view of further potential behavioral intention among medical tourists on healthcare providers in Malaysia.

The data were collected through a survey questionnaire among medical tourists, with 596 successful cases collected via 6 major private hospitals at 3 popular Malaysian medical tourism locations. Data analysis was then performed using both SPSS and Smart PLS software.

The findings from the present study acknowledged the importance of both social (e.g. social media and word-of-mouth communications) and marketing (e.g. hospital advertisement and price perception) aspects toward establishing brand image among medical tourism-based hospitals. Consequently, the brand image would influence perceived service quality among medical tourists; further entail positive impact on behavioral intention, with satisfaction and perceived value as mediators between both factors. Following PLS predict analysis confirming this model’s high predictive capability, it demonstrated close representation to actual medical tourism scenario in Malaysia.

This study is one of the very few studies that explored the minimally investigated territory on the consequential importance of hospital branding within the medical tourism industry; specifically through extending the literature on the influence of social and marketing efforts toward the formation of brand image.

The study aims to investigate consumers' attitudes toward advertising by medical professionals, and how the attitudes vary among different demographic groups.

A survey using quota sampling was conducted. Altogether 1,297 adults aged 20 or above in Hong Kong filled in an online questionnaire in March 2012.

Consumers' attitudes toward advertising by medical professionals were in general favorable. Respondents reported that advertising by medical professionals provides consumers with information about the services and qualifications of practitioners. However, consumers were worried about misleading information in these advertisements. Respondents perceived strongly that advertising by medical professionals would lead to an increase in the price of services. Younger respondents and respondents with higher education were more sceptical toward advertising by medical professionals.

Medical professionals should put emphasis on providing consumers with relevant information of their services, expertise, and qualifications to assist consumers' information search. They should refrain from using price appeal.

This is the first study to examine consumers' attitudes toward advertising by medical professionals in a Chinese context.

There is a widespread push by government and private payers to make the prices of health care services more transparent to consumers. The main goal is to promote more effective consumer shopping; secondary goals include promoting provider competition and reducing pricing variation. There are several headwinds opposing these efforts. One problem is that there may be several valid reasons for why price variations persist. Another is that provider (and other health care) markets are not very competitive, and sometimes widespread information about prices may make them even less so. A third is that price discrimination may be economically efficient. Any analysis of price transparency must take the specific market setting into account. This chapter analyzes markets characterized by monopolistic, oligopolistic, and competitive conditions to determine when and under what economic and managerial circumstances price transparency will be useful.

Public hospitals in China usually rely on revenues from medical services and medications to compensate for major costs given their nonprofit nature. The lack of government subsidies and unreasonable prices of medical services have led to high medical costs and unbalanced reimbursement system for public hospitals. There is a critical need of research on improvement of reimbursement system that will create positive effect on China’s health-care system. This paper aims to focus on four dimensions of stakeholders (government, patients, medical insurance agencies and social organization) and six major expenditures to explore reimbursement scheme for public hospitals in China with the purpose of relieving unbalanced income and expenditure of hospitals, avoiding medication markups and reducing medical expenses from patients.

In this paper, the authors study reimbursement scheme for public hospitals from the perspective of four dimensions of stakeholders and how stakeholders reimburse six major expenditures of hospitals. A total of 128 effective samples were collected from financial data of 32 public hospitals through 2009-2012. This paper analyzes the econometric models of the selected revenue and expenditure. This paper analyzes the econometric models of the selected revenue and expenditure using linear regression. The linear relationship between each cost and different types of incomes (i.e. reimbursements from government, patients, insurance agencies and social organization) is analyzed before and after cancelling the medication markups.

Results from empirical research verify that government reimbursement is insufficient, and using medication markups to compensate for medical service costs has become a serious problem for China’s public hospitals. To avoid the medication markups and improve the reimbursement scheme, government should reimburse labor cost, fixed assets cost and research cost; patients and medical insurance agencies should reimburse the costs of medical service, medication and administration/operations; and social organization should supplement the fixed assets cost.

In this study, the authors defined and classified stakeholders of reimbursement scheme for public hospitals in China, which help understand the roles and effects that different stakeholders can play in compensation. Along with the proposed reimbursement scheme framework, this study will help make effective implementation of new health-care reform program in China.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and discuss the concepts of service convergence and service integration, illustrate them in the context of the medical tourism industry, and link them to factors that contributed to the success of a medical tourism firm.

The basis for the conceptual development of service convergence and service integration is an in-depth case study of Bumrungrad International Hospital (BIH) in Thailand. Based on semi-structured interviews and archival data, BIH's business model is analyzed and factors are identified that led to its success in the industry.

BIH's success can be attributed to nine key initiatives that enhanced customer focus, operational efficiency, and service quality. These initiatives supported BIH's twofold business model of product differentiation and globally competitive prices. The firm's activities led to the integration of medical and hospitality services resulting in a new, enhanced product. Competitors adopted BIH's service integration approach, which started the service convergence trend in the medical tourism industry.

The conceptual foundations for service convergence and service integration are laid in this paper and can serve as the basis for future research.

Insights from BIH's business model can guide firms in medical tourism and related industries on how to innovate and how to successfully implement their service products.

This paper introduces the term service convergence and discusses its mechanisms. Furthermore, it identifies success factors of a leading firm in the medical tourism industry and links them to service integration.

The study aims to address a critical gap in existing healthcare payment schemes and care service pricing by recognizing the influential role of patients' decisions on self-management efforts. These decisions not only impact health outcomes but also shape the demand for care, subsequently influencing care costs. Despite the significance of this interplay, current payment schemes often overlook these dynamics. The research focuses on investigating the implications of a novel behavior-based payment scheme, designed to align incentives and establish a direct connection between patients' decisions and care costs. The primary objective is to comprehensively understand whether and how this innovative payment scheme structure influences key stakeholders, including patients, care providers, insurers and overall social welfare.

In this paper, we propose a game-theoretical model to incorporate the performance of self-management with the demand for healthcare service, compare the patient's effort decision for self-management and provider's price decision for healthcare service under a behavior-based scheme with that under two implemented widely payment schemes, that is, co-payment scheme and co-insurance scheme.

Our findings confirm that the behavior-based scheme incentives patient self-management more than current schemes while reducing their possibility of seeking healthcare service, which indirectly induces the provider to lower the price of the service. The stakeholders' utility under various payment schemes is sensitive to the cost of treatment and the perceived health utility of patients. Especially, patient health awareness is not always benefited provider profit, as it motivates patient self-management while diminishing the demand for care.

We provide a novel framework for characterizing behavior-based payment schemes. Our results confirm the need for modification of the current payment scheme to incentivize patient self-management.

The purpose of this paper is to present the three critical changes needed to reform the US health care system – these changes will drive cascades of other beneficial changes. These three changes include the use of transparent market prices, alignment of incentives and systematic assessment and ratings of quality.

The paper used an analysis based on the literature on the comparison between non-market and market systems. The current US health care system is similar to the Soviet economic system, and the paper proposes moving it gradually to where it can respond to market-based signals.

The US health care system needs to adopt transparent and real pricing, independent quality assessment of health provider organizations and portable electronic patient records. These changes will lead to continuing cascades of innovation and improvement.

The recommended changes will be opposed by vested interest groups, and so will be easier with regulatory guidance and encouragement. It would also be useful to protect against “regulatory capture” by interested parties during the change process.

Health care in the USA will gradually become better and cheaper. Health organizations will become more transparent. Regulators would have to set up and supervise private quality ratings agencies.

Social implications of this paper include greater labor mobility and higher productivity, as well as increased competitiveness of the USA.

In spite of numerous writings on the subject, this issue has not been analyzed in this way. This paper is unique in the way in which it layouts the process of movement to a market-based system for the US health care system.

The purpose of this study is to identify medical service quality factors that patients care about and establish a medical service quality evaluation index system by analyzing online reviews of medical and healthcare service platforms in combination with a questionnaire survey.

This study adopts a combination of review mining and questionnaire surveys. The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model was used to mine hospital reviews on the medical and healthcare service platform to obtain the medical service quality factors that patients pay attention to, and then the questionnaire was administered to obtain the relative importance of these factors to patients' perception of service quality. Finally, the index system was established.

The medical service quality factors patients care about include medical skills and ethics, registration service, operation effect, consulting communication, drug therapy, diagnosis process and medical equipment.

The identification of medical service quality factors provides a reference for medical institutions to improve their medical service quality.

This study uses online review mining to obtain medical service quality factors from the perspective of patients, which is different from previous methods of obtaining factors from relevant literature or expert judgments; then, based on the mining results, a medical service quality evaluation index system is established by using questionnaire data.