Pricing policies and procedures of health institutions in Turkey

 

There are 4 main health care institutions as state, university, foundations and private sector institutions in Turkey. If we consider them generally;

State Organizations; these are divided as hospitals, family practice center, community health centers and private branch centers (such as diabetes, heart, tuberculosis, public heath). The prices applied in these institutions are determined by Ministry of Health and has different pricing table as social security system, private patients and foreign patients according to the their countries. The common characteristics of these hospitals; they cannot be done MCC, always cannot be provided regular information flow and cannot be served excluding their own procedures.Foundation Hospitals; Independent from states and private sector, these hospitals are institution serving charitable by some great companies or families or communities. The pricing of these services here is made by Turkish Medical Association, State or their own internal dynamics and are not subjected to the certain pricing policy. MCC studies can be done according to the location of these institutions.

University Hospitals; These institutions in Turkey have completely autonomous structure. They are included any pricing system. They are determined their own price exactly. They are included in 2 categories as state and private university hospitals. The state hospitals are shown parallelism with ordinary state hospitals, however they are not similar. The private universities also are determined their own prices exactly and they are not responsible to be included to the any pricing system. They can only act according to certain trends.

Private health institutions; these institutions are specified their own prices according to the minimum wage payment tariff which determined by Turkish Medical Association. However, the most important characteristic of this tariff is to determine the minimum wage. However, the hospitals are free for pricing due to there is no top limit. Also, only medical services are given in price tariff of Turkish Medical Association, hence there is not any advisor schedule in services such as hospital services, nursery services. Hence, sometimes the hospital bed fee of an outpatient clinic is more expensive than the bed fee of any hospital in the same region. Also, there are some trends that are not written however the health sector is agreed on implementation of for many years. And according to these trends, some fees are not paid or payment in rate of 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 are paid in despite of including in tariff. Due to these prices are not written, they are determined by experiences. Also, additional discounts can be taken in these institutions due to some reasons such as bilateral relations, working conditions.

Some private hospitals are serving with Social Security Instituation In Turkey contractually. These agreements are included sometimes all branches,sometimes certain branches or certain treatments. However; also they are entitled to get difference rate in rate of %200 of treatment fee that the private hospitals are get from their patients according to the existing law and regulations. In this case, it is caused to get more expensive service and invoice to both Social Security Instituation and private institution (double invoicing) from time to time. In such cases, the hospitals are taken additional fee from patient directly and prepared invoice on behalf of their names.