Assessment of the Turkish Health Transformation Program With Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

Governments are obliged to deliver basic healthcare to individuals in an equal, safe, and efficient environment. Therefore, they occasionally make improvements and reforms in the health policy. The health transformation program (HTP) is the most comprehensive reform about the health sector in Turkey. In this article, the aim of our article is to analyze the success, efficiency, and sustainability of HTP; in this context, we discussed two different case studies. First, Turkey's efficiency was evaluated during the years 2003–2016 in the health sector with data envelopment analysis. According to the first case study, Turkey was inefficient during the years 2003–2012 because of the investments, the following years, these investments returned and it became efficient. In the second case study, we handled Turkey and nine organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) countries, which are similar in terms of gross domestic product. We compared relative efficiencies of Turkey with mentioned OECD countries and observed that Turkey is efficient except in 2007. The main reason for this is that the health and financial expenditures took the highest value in that year. Besides, Turkey took fifth place in the ranking among ten countries in terms of the average efficiency score.