Sustainable health and medical tourism green supply chain management: Challenges and opportunities

Travelling overseas to seek healthcare and medical tourism services is a global phenomenon. Despite the downturns such as global financial crisis and recession, medical tourism services are in demand. Travelling abroad for medical treatment/surgery is an innovation to get value for money. Due to globalization, there are demand-side and the supply-side factors that drive potential patients to seek surgery abroad. This chapter explores the complex coordinating factors that the medical travellers/patients and the healthcare service providers face, which drive the global medical tourism supply chain from patients deciding to travel abroad to the host country for surgery, until their return journey home. Therefore, building an eco-logical logistics or a health and medical tourism green supply chain management-based sustainable business of medical tourism industry is critical for safety and wellbeing of the patients/medical tourists under the new-normal paradigm, as global patients travel to receive value for money and improve their physical health and quality of life.