Abstract
BackgroundSince 2003, Turkey has implemented major health care reforms to develop easily accessible, high-quality, efficient, and effective healthcare services for the population. The purpose of this study was to bring out opinions of the Turkish people on health system reform process, focusing on several aspects of health system and assessing whether the public prefer the current health system or that provided a decade ago.MethodsA cross sectional survey study was carried out in Turkey to collect data on people’s opinions on the healthcare reforms. Data was collected via self administered household’s structured questionnaire. A five-point Likert-type scale was used to score the closed comparative statements. Each statement had response categories ranging from (1) “strongly agree” to (5) “strongly disagree.” A total of 482 heads of households (response rate: 71.7%) with the mean age of (46.60 years) were selected using a multi stage sampling technique from seven geographical regions in Turkey from October 2011 to January 2012. Multiple logistic regressions were performed to identify significant contributing factors in this study.ResultsEmploying descriptive statistics it is observed that among the respondents, more than two third of the population believes that the changes have had positive effects on the health system. A vast majority of respondents (82.0%) believed that there was an increase in accessibility, 73.7% thought more availability of health resources, 72.6% alleged improved quality of care, and 72.6% believed better attitude of politician/mass media due to the changes in the last 10 years. Indeed, the majority of respondents (77.6%) prefer the current health care system than the past. In multivariate analysis, there was a statistically significant relationship between characteristics and opinions of the respondents. The elderly, married females, perceived themselves healthy and those who believe that people are happier now than 10 years ago have a more positive opinion of the changes. While, the single unemployed from rural region who perceived themselves as unhealthy and believe that people are unhappy now compare to ten years ago showed less positive opinions.ConclusionsHence, we conclude that from the people’s perspective overall the health system reforms were most likely successful.
Highlights
Since 2003, Turkey has implemented major health care reforms to develop accessible, high-quality, efficient, and effective healthcare services for the population
Turkey is a member of the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Group of Twenty (G-20), The World Trade Organization (WTO), The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and several other regional and
In terms of household occupational status, 36.9% of them worked in the governmental sector, 31.5% in the private sector, and 18.9% were self-employed, while 12.7% were unemployed
Summary
Since 2003, Turkey has implemented major health care reforms to develop accessible, high-quality, efficient, and effective healthcare services for the population. The purpose of this study was to bring out opinions of the Turkish people on health system reform process, focusing on several aspects of health system and assessing whether the public prefer the current health system or that provided a decade ago. In the year 2003, Turkey started Health Transition Program (HTP) to develop accessible, high-quality, efficient, and effective healthcare services for the population, which was for the sake of pairing its healthcare system with the health regulations of the European Union (EU) and OECD countries [2,3]. The study focused on accessibility, availability of resources, quality of care, information by politicians and mass media, and whether the public prefers the current health system or that provided a decade ago. Patient’s rights: special units within healthcare institutions that investigate complaints by patients and providers were established as part of the strengthening of patient rights [2,4,5,6,7]
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