Inter-regional patient outmigration to Seoul in South Korea: the role of regional healthcare quality perceptions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Public perception of healthcare quality reflects a people-centered approach to evaluating quality and influences healthcare utilization. Patient choice of healthcare providers is not solely based on objective measures, but varies with perceived quality factors such as experiences and trust. In South Korea, a large number of patients with severe diseases bypass their regional tertiary hospitals and receive treatment from a few tertiary hospitals located in the capital city Seoul: that is, they outmigrate. In this paper, we aimed to directly measure the public's feeling of reassurance with their regional healthcare system and examine it in explaining patient outmigration in South Korea.

Methods

The data of this study came from an online survey involving 1,241 indivi

SUBMITTER: Lee MH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11921725 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature