Premium
Are family medicine centres achieving their target in Turkey: Impact on health care utilization of mothers and infants
Author(s) -
Aygün Aysun
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the international journal of health planning and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-1751
pISSN - 0749-6753
DOI - 10.1002/hpm.3079
Subject(s) - childbirth , prenatal care , pregnancy , medicine , family medicine , health care , postnatal care , program evaluation , perinatal period , estimation , nursing , demography , environmental health , population , statistics , genetics , management , sociology , economics , biology , economic growth , mathematics
The family medicine (FM) system was introduced as the main source of primary care in Turkey as a component of the Health Transformation Program reforms. During a gradual implementation process, provinces switched to the FM system at different points in time between 2005 and 2010. In this paper, we use a micro‐level data set to test whether the health care utilization of mothers during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period is affected by the program. Using a difference‐in‐differences method for estimation, we find that the program is only effective for pregnant women who lived in provinces with a limited availability of specialist doctors. As a result of the FM program, women are likely to have their first prenatal consultancy earlier and their probability of seeing a doctor during their prenatal visit and receiving an ultrasound and blood and urine sample checks increases if they live in a province with a low number of specialists per 10,000 people. We find that the impact of the FM program decreases as the rate of specialists in a province increases, which negates any positive effect of the program on health care use.