Assessment of Turkey's Achievements in Universal Health Coverage

Turkey’s health system has long faced many fundamental challenges including insufficient financing, unequal insurance system, severe deficits and inadequate distribution of physical infrastructures and human resources and injustice service delivery. In a relatively short period of time, Turkey succeeded to implement a major health system transformation policy and achieved universal health coverage in order to promote health system effectiveness through improving governance, efficiency and consumers’ satisfaction, the gaps in health indicators, responsiveness and fair health financing have been filled fast. The aim of this study was to assess how Turkey could achieve the universal health coverage successfully and to review lessons learned from its experiences.
Health system functions framework was used to analyze successes of health transformation program in Turkey. Documents including officially published and unpublished reports, journal articles, slides from the websites of the World Bank and World Health Organization, and also reports on periodic visits of Iranian health system experts from Turkey's health system were studied. Data of the related discussions were also included.
Through understanding the challenges of health system, health policy makers implemented health transformation program through political commitment, redefining new components of leadership and stewardship of ministry of health, health financing, governmental health insurance and reorganization of service delivery
Turkey’s political and economic stability, sustainability of the change team, comprehensiveness of the health sector plan, flexible approaches toward development of national health program, supply side fundamental changes, omitting dual practices, integration of funds, quality and satisfaction promotion, proper implementation and enforcement of rules and collaboration of private sector made it possible to achieve the UHC.