Paying for health care in Turkey

This chapter focuses on the role of payment systems in supporting the development of Turkey’s health-care system and improving the health of the Turkish people. The last decade of health reform in Turkey has seen high levels of spending directed at maximising the services delivered by a low number of health professionals. A key feature of Turkish health policy has been the use of performance-based payments that link the salaries of specialists working in public hospitals to the number of services they deliver. The approach has been different in primary care, where steep financial penalties have been introduced where doctors do not deliver a basic set of child and maternal health services. The combination of these reforms has served its purpose in achieving one of the more remarkable extensions of health care to the population in the last half century. To prepare the health-care system for tomorrow’s challenges, policy makers now need to grapple with how payment systems can sensibly evolve to reward quality and not just quantity.