Abstract:
The Kenya government is expected to lead in developing medical experts and facilities to
take care of the well-being of its citizens and beyond the borders, since health is one of
the pillars in the government’s agenda of Vision 2030. Therefore, the study is to find out
determinants for medical tourism for private hospitals in Nairobi County, with a view
of improving medical tourism in Kenya. The study examined a sample of cross-section
of the tourist stakeholders to establish the impact of quality medical treatment facility,
service delivery offered, competent doctors and the cost for medical treatments for
private hospitals in Nairobi County. A descriptive and exploratory strategy were used
for the study, whereby, the population was 400 medical tourists per month visiting the
25 private hospitals (Table 4) using census method. While, Krejcie and Morgan Table
(1970) was used to sample 196 respondents, by use of convenient sampling to select
medical tourists in each hospital selected. The data was collected by a structured
questionnaire and analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The
presentations and conclusions of the study was done after descriptive and inferential
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statistics was investigated. The findings revealed that predictors were statistically
significant at α=0.05 and the p-values < 0.05 (Quality medical treatment facility, p=0.00;
Service delivery, p=0.00; Competent doctors, p=0.03; Costs, p=0.00). This is an indication
that Quality medical treatment facility, Service delivery and Competence of doctors all
have a significant outcome on medical tourists coming to Kenya. The study
recommended that the management of private hospitals ensure that they have quality
medical treatment equipment/facilities and competent medical doctors who will offer
quality services to motivate more tourists to visit hospitals. The government to put in
place policies to protect medical tourists from being exploited by private hospitals as
well as to manage public hospitals to compete favorably with private hospitals. In such
a scenario, medical tourism would expand and lead to the creation of employment and
generate revenues for the country. Finally, the study will assist the government and
tourism stakeholders in addressing the obstacles facing local and international medical
tourism in the country. The researcher suggested a comparative study between private
and public hospitals on medical tourism in Nairobi, Kenya.
