Development of health-medical tourism in Kazakhstan

The scope of medical and health-improving therapy in our country grew steadily until 1989, when social policy became less of a priority for the state during the revolution, and financial funding for the direction began to diminish. The country's health tourism failed during the 1991-1998 crisis. Due to the low profitability of medical and health organizations, trade unions, which owned many health resorts at the time, sold sanatoriums and boarding houses to private firms. In fact, many sanatoriums and boarding houses began to operate in the technological mode of hotels as a result of a forced reduction in the volume of medical and health-improving services supplied. Such measures were tactically appropriated in light of the situation at the time, but it is now evident that such a course of growth is strategically unpromising.

It is required to make a long and medium-term development forecast to examine the existing condition of health tourism, including evaluating the role and location of the sanatorium and resort destination, as well as identifying all possible choices for future tourist development.

For these purposes, can employ the most complex and widely used extrapolation approach for these objectives.

Its purpose is to research and transfer historical and present sustainable development ideas into the future. This method, however, has a significant drawback: in the case of long-term forecasting, it is hard to obtain a valid forecast due to the influence of unaccounted-for factors.

In general, the definition of medical tourism allows residents and non-residents to travel within and outside of the state for a period of at least 20 hours and no more than 6 months for leisure purposes in order to avoid various ailments of the human body. Along with the phrase "health tourism," the notion of "medical tourism," which is a synonym for "health tourism," is frequently employed in scientific practice [1].

Health tourism has a number of distinctive features:

1. treatment at resorts is expensive. Although relatively cheap tours have been developed recently, this type of tourism is designed mainly for wealthy clients who are increasingly focused not on a standard set of medical services, but on an individual treatment program;
2. another feature is that people of the older age group go to resorts when chronic diseases worsen or a weakening body is unable to cope with everyday stresses at work and at home. Accordingly, these tourists make a choice between resorts specializing in the treatment of a particular disease, and resorts of a mixed type, which have a general strengthening effect on the body and contribute to recuperation [2].

The modern sanatorium-resort complex of the Republic of Kazakhstan has evolved from the Soviet sanatorium-resort system, so its current state is still largely determined by the approaches developed in the pre-reform period. These approaches contradict the principles of a market economy and are the source of many modern problems of industry management.

The Government of Kazakhstan is now faced with the task of developing a new economic development model that would ensure the country's global competitiveness. There are five priority areas, one of which is "accelerated technical modernization of the economy," which relies on the development of areas such as healthcare and education. The following six healthcare-related initiatives have been identified as part of this focus area:

• Improvement of the healthcare sector’s efficiency through the introduction of mandatory social health insurance;
• Market liberalization and reduction of barriers to private healthcare organizations;
• Attraction of investments and development of public private partnerships;
• Creation of a unified healthcare information space;
• Development of the pharmaceutical market;
• Development of medical tourism.

The Ministry of Health has designed ten sectoral projects for the implementation of these objectives, nine of which are overseen by the Republican Center for Health Development (RCHD).RCHD has created a roadmap that includes short-term, medium-term, and long-term tasks in order to ensure the project's success.

Following the completion of the short-term activities, a marketing plan is being developed, which will include an assessment of potential demand for Kazakhstan's medical services, the selection of Kazakhstan's competitive areas, a communication program, and a strategy for attracting international patients.

The medium-term activities will produce a Conceptual Framework including strategic aims and objectives, increase of the country’s international profile by participating in international conferences and exhibitions related to medical tourism, creation of a unified web-portal and a contact center and networking with global companies and associations in the field of medical tourism. In the long-term, a brand of Kazakhstan’s healthcare providers will be established, the development of the healthcare workforce will be focused on training in hospital services provision. The goal of the project of development of medical tourism is to create a competitive healthcare sector integrated into the global market system in medical tourism. In order to achieve best results the Government will develop competitive fields of medical tourism and promote Kazakhstan medical organizations [3].

The initiative also includes the development of integrated service focusing on patients from the CIS and the Central Asia. But it concerns the patients not only from the CIS and the Central Asia the medical tourism will also attract patients from abroad. But first there should be potential growth of medical organizations and its services for the realization of this project. For conformance with international standards the Government will involve global leading companies in the field of medical service provision for managing medical organizations.

According to the very minimum standard each organization should have an integrated site and call-center. So the project includes this issue into the step for developing. The key challenges to the development of medical tourism in Kazakhstan include:

• Flawed legislation regulating the approaches to provide services to incoming medical tourists;
• Inadequate efforts of medical organizations to attract tourists;
• Lack of a systematic approach, planning and mechanisms of large-scale attraction of medical tourists;
• Lack of comprehensive record-keeping of medical tourists by authorized bodies;
• Lack of an accessible website and a call-center, the tools of regulating the streams of incoming medical tourists;
• Incomplete preparedness of medical organizations for the provision of services to foreign tourists (lack of flexible pricing and service packages, inadequate level of services);
• Lack of recognizable brands of medical organizations.
• Lack of recognizable brands of medical organizations [4].

To overcome these challenges will require some time and effort. Firstly it needs elaboration of new legislation for the development of medical tourism and statistical record - keeping of medical tourists. As it was said before, creation of a unified web-portal and call-center for the provision of medical information and consultations will help to improve the quality of services supplied. The Government will introduce the practice of forming a comprehensive package of services in clinics, provision of services to patients and relatives in foreign languages, provision of further support for patients through telemedicine and online consultations.

For international expansion PR campaigns and branding of Kazakhstan medical organizations are need to be done. Moreover, in accordance with the Tourism Industry Development Concept 2023: There is a work on increasing the number of direct flight services with other countries, including price optimization for flight tariffs, for the purposes of attracting tourists.

The visa policies for incoming tourists will be simplified to the greatest possible extent. The infrastructure and transport logistics is improving. Hospitality and catering services are being developed at the moment. Also, there is a work on attracting investments with the framework of public private partnerships for the construction of modern clinics. The neighboring countries (the CIS and Central Asia) are identified as the potential consumers of services [5].

According to the Statistics Committee, there are 154 sanatorium-resort organizations (hereinafter referred to as SKO) with a capacity of 21,291 beds in Kazakhstan, of which 18,475 are year-round beds. 80% of sanatoriums are private structures, state sanatoriums are departmental health resorts of the Medical Center of the Presidential Administration, Ministries of Internal Affairs, Health, etc [6].

Tourist companies selling travel packages within the country note a small activity of sanatoriums in terms of the development of agency networks with the involvement of travel companies.

In conclusion, the development of medical tourism in Kazakhstan will be provided an additional incentive for the development of the healthcare industry, since the development of medical tourism forces the medicine of countries to develop at a faster pace and will contribute to improve the health of the population of the Republic of Kazakhstan, promote the development of domestic tourism, leveling seasonality in tourism, will ensure a longer stay of tourists in the country, will give additional income, since the check of a medical tourist is on average 1.3 times higher than the check of an ordinary tourist, it will provide a multiplicative effect (accompanying medical tourists live in hotels, etc.). Medical tourism will ensure the development of the sanatorium and resort industry, systematize the use of natural healing factors, will create additional jobs, increase investment attractiveness.