THE INCREASING TREND OF MEDICAL TOURIST FROM NORTHSUMATERA TO MALAYSIA: ANALYSIS ON SOCIO-ECONOMICFACTORS

It is MacReady (2007) who believed thatthere will be an up in the trend ofmedical tourism, this industry will grow about 20% worldwide. This couldhappen because of the socioe-conomic factors that support this condition. Asreported by SERI (2004), Leng (2006) andTourism Malaysia (2010), Indonesianpatients have been the largest foreign patients visited Malaysia. This trend isinteresting to learn further and this study aims at finding out the macroeconomicfactors which have influenced the numbers of people from North Sumateraseeking for medical treatment in Malaysia. Using secondary data, this surveystudy has regressed the number of North Sumatran medical tourist (as thedependent variable) for the period of 2000-2011 to the independent variables suchas exchange rate, inflation and income per capita in order to find out the economicdeterminant of number of medicaltourists from North Sumatera. Thedemographic determinant choosen to studyas the only independent variable ispopulation for the same period of study. Finally, in order to incorporate the healthseeking behavior point of view, this studyused independent variables such as lifeexpectancy, health facilities, number ofdoctors and level of education as thedeterminant for the number of medical tourists from North Sumatera. The resultof regression for economic determinant showed that income and exchange ratewere positively and statistically significant determinant for the number of medicaltourists while the independent variableof inflation is not responsive to thechanges in the dependent variable of number of medical tourist. The result ofsingle regression of the independentvariable of population was foundsignificantly and positively tohave affected the numberof medical tourist. Fromfour of the health seeking behaviours asdependent variables, it is found that lifeexpectancy and the number ofhealth facilities was responsive to the changes ofthe number of medical tourist while the number of doctors and level of educationwas not