Privatization of Health-care Facilities in Istanbul

A wide variety of health-care systems, ranging from the traditional private medical practice to medical care services, is organized by the government in Turkey. In the 1990s, as a result of privatization movement at the international level, the Turkish Government took the decision to financially support the establishment of new private health-care facilities in order to answer the increasing health-care needs of people and, at the same time, to create a competitive market to improve the quality of health care. This paper investigates, first, the growth pattern of the number of private hospitals beds versus public hospital beds and their spatial distribution in Istanbul; then, the relationships between the number of public and private hospital beds and the characteristics of the districts, such as population, income and education by using regression analysis. According to the results, while income and education are the most important factors to affect the number of private hospital beds, no relationship is found between the number of public hospital beds and the characteristics of the districts. Thus, most of the private hospitals are concentrated in the higher income neighborhoods. More efforts should be spent for balanced distribution of public and private hospital beds with respect to health-care needs of people.