Medical tourism in Russia: Design of sociological research and prognosis

The article considers medical tourism in Russia as a social phenomenon. The design (development of a program, hypotheses, methodology) of sociological research is proposed, which involves understanding the existing and obtaining missing information about the investigated social phenomenon. In solving these problems, it is important to understand that the genesis and development of medical tourism are infl uenced by quite numerous social factors (often acting in directly opposite directions) that actualize social reality in the time period of one to two years ago. First of all, these are «covid» and «political» vectors of social processes. To develop a program for sociological research of the medical services market, it is important to keep in mind that tourists from the developed countries, where prices for similar services are much higher than in Russia, are more interested in them. The basic hypothesis of the resulting forecast today is formulated as follows: the Russian market for medical services currently and in the near future will become less attractive for foreign medical tourists than in previous years, in particular, due to the deterioration of the quality of the services provided and the rapid increase in prices for them. Domestic medical tourism will undergo both negative and positive changes. The promising branches of the medical services market in Russia are surgery and neurology. However, other areas of medicine both in the current period and in the medium term are in dire need and will need parallel import and import substitution.