investigating the development of the private sector in health tourism (based on lewin's model)

introduction: given the high income that can be earned from health tourism, many people in private sectors are willing to enter this field. nevertheless, iran's share of this source of income is small since no active and successful bodies in health tourism market have been developed in private sector. the purpose of this paper is to identify the driving as well as the constraining factors of private sector development in health tourism. method: this paper is cross-sectional and retrospective. the data were gathered via structured likert scale questionnaire and face to face interview. the participants of this study were 60 managers working in different tourism agencies in tehran. in order to analyze the data and evaluate the results, t-test and chi-square test were run using spss software version 16. results: the results of the study indicate that the averages of technology, policy, coordination and security as constraining factors are 3.25, 3.92, 3.90, and 4.02 while they are 4.14, 3.47, 4.04 and 2.53 as driving factors. the results show that except the safety as a driving factor, the averages are higher than (3) for other factors. conclusion: the multiplicity of decision making and policy making centers, lack of coordination between private and public sectors, technological restrictions and tourists' attitudes concerning unsafety are directly related to the unwillingness of the private sector in investing in health tourism. keywords: health tourism, private sector, driving factors, constraining factors.