Health Transformation Program in Turkey and Efficiency of Public Hospitals

Under Health Transformation Program (HTP), many important reforms have been carried out in health sector of Turkey since 2003. The purpose of this study is to investigate the technical efficiency of the Ministry of Health Hospitals under the impacts of the HTP during the period 2009-2014 in addition to the effects of some environmental and institutional factors on the technical efficiency of the hospitals. The efficiency calculations of 301 hospitals were carried out by Data Envelopment Analysis for each year. Also, before and after the 2010 and 2012 periods, the variations in total factor productivity of the hospitals have been calculated by the method of Malmquist index. According to the obtained results, after the periods 2010 and 2012, the rates of increase in efficiency have a downward trend as compared to previous periods. As a result, despite technological improvement in the hospitals, there seems to be a decline in total factor productivity of hospitals