HEALTH OF TURKEY

Health services of Turkey is controlled by the Ministry of Health via a central government system. In 2003, the Turkish Government introduced the health care reform program which aims to increase the budget range allocated to health services to make a large portion of population healthy. Turkey Statistical Institution announced that 76.3 billion Turkish liras is spent in 2012 within the scope of health services. According to 2013's reports there are 30.116 health institutes and 573 patients per doctor on average. Furthermore the number of beds each 1000 people is 2.64.

Turkey, which is in process to join the European Community, has great investments on health, technology and education. Turkey is among the countries in terms of having most hospitals in the world too.Turkey, which is at the junction of the European and Asian continents, is an intersection in terms of airway and highway. Herewith approximately 400.00 foreign patients come to Turkey each year because of the attaching importance to health. Number of patient who come to Turkey for treatment increases day by day as a result of joint workings with health centers and health tourism agencies and exceeds the health goals of 2023.

Turkey is the sixth country in terms of attracting tourist with 39 million visitors per year. Turkey has important attacks on tourism and improves its tourism quality and capacity with each passing year. It also has an international reputation in the field of hotel management. Turkey is preferred by millions of tourists each year because of its hospitable, friendly, quality services and world class facilities. It is a new favourite of health tourism along with tourism with local and intenational investments on hotel management and health.

Do you know these ?

• There are 170 health institutions which have conformity certificate of JCI Joint Commission International in Turkey.
• There are 60 internationally recognized medical faculties in Turkey.
• Turkey gives European standards health services due to being a candidate country of the European Union.
• There are laboratories and production facilities of important pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Astra Zeneca.
• TRC blood bank having the JCI conformity certicifate, remains at the forefront of its reliability.

Strengths of Turkey on Medical Tourism

Turkey is an advantageous country for medical tourism whose goal of occurrence is to provide quality and more economic treatment and to improve health. These advantages are listed below :

• The most important advantage of Turkey on medical tourism is having an institution which coordianates all tourism workings ( SATURK) and having a state policy has been developed.
• Having a national airline company as THY, that has access from the utmost number of flight points in the world.
• Being a regional leader in infrastructure of Training and Research Hospital because a considerable part of health institutions has come to the level that can compete with the West in terms of technological infrastructure.
• Ranking in the second place in the world in terms of number of accredited hospital with JCI.
• Having many the theme of health available thermal sources and ranking in the first place in Europe in terms of number of available thermal source.
• The existence of a positive image on Turkey in some countries.
• Suitable climate spreads over the 4 seasons.
• Being the historical and tourist center of civilizations.
• Having three hours flight distance to the population of one billion people.
• Having the serious potential of the workforce with young population.
• The existence of quality human resources especially specialized in medical staff.
• Health services in Turkey is more economic than other advanced countries.

You can see the development of health tourism and annual patient number in the following table :

• In 2008 74.093
• In 2009 91.961
• In 2010 109.678
• In 2011 176.000
• In 2012 261.999
• In 2013 300.000
• In 2014 335.460
• In 2015 398.350 people have come to Turkey for being treated.
  
  

  Source: *These are number of foreign patient which is published by TURSAB.
          

GERMANY AND LIBYA ARE IN THE FIRST ORDER : Most of the medical tourists are coming from Libya, Germany and Iraq. The patients, get services within the scope of tourist's health, are mostly coming from Russia, Germany and England. It is detected the most patients in the overall are coming from Germany, Libya and Russia.

REASON FOR PREFENCE OF JCI ACCREDITATION : One of the interesting discovery obtained on this study is that JCI accredited hospitals are preferred by one over 4 international patients and the group of hospitals consisted of 3 or more hospitals are preferred by one over 3 international patients.

REASONS FOR INCREASE IN PATIENTS BEING TREATED IN TURKEY

1. Close flight distance
2. Low treatment costs
3. Qualified personnel
4. Quality services
5. Modern medical technology
6. Lack of standby time
7. Sociocultural similarity
8. Diversity of accompanying touristic activity