Financial Sustainability of The Turkish Health Care System: Experts’ Opinion

Abstract

Financial sustainability of health care systems is an issue that has frequently come up in recent years. Similarly, it has been a common topic of discussion in Turkey, and reforms implemented in the system since 2003 have made this issue more popular. The aim of this study is to determine the experts’ viewpoints about financial sustainability of the health care system in Turkey. The content analysis results indicates that an important proportion of experts think that Turkey health care system faced with unsustainability problem and main problems were lack of resources and university hospitals’ problems. The most important external factors effect financial sustainability are reimbursement system, resources allocated for the system, policies, foreign dependency, and economic growth. Moreover, the major internal factors affecting sustainability are administrator & personnel performance, human resources management costs, and cost of service & goods. The participants’ primary recommendation for enabling financial sustainability is novel financing models development and referral chain application.