Measuring Willingness in an International Healthcare Context: Exploring Germany and the Netherlands

Abstract

This research has been conducted in cooperation with VieCuri Medical Centre. The purpose of this research was to investigate the willingness of German people to go to a Dutch hospital, namely VieCuri. Ten factors, based on existing literature, have been measured to determine the willingness. These factors are quality of the hospital, the offer of medical (sub-) specialisms, waiting times, distance, linguistic competence, trust, affective commitment, cultural sensitivity, insurances, and MRSA protocols. Some of these are important in case of healthcare, others are important in case of internationalization. Data collection has been done based on a survey, which leaded to 157 responses. The population that was interest of this research were German people in the area of Nettetal, which is a city close to the border. The data have been analyzed based on an analysis of means and a multiple regression. The analysis showed that five out of ten factors have a significant influence on the willingness to go to VieCuri. These factors are insurance, linguistic competence, MRSA protocols, quality of the hospital, and offer of medical (sub-)specialisms. These are summed up based on the strength of influence, of which insurance has the strongest influence and offer of medical (sub-)specialisms has the weakest influence.