Saturday, April 16, 2016
Assembly A (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
Health human resource management has recently moved into policy agenda of many European countries as well as global agencies. This article examines the health workforce challenges in the context of Turkey's recent health reform initiative, Health Transformation Program (HTP). Reformers identified shortages, imbalances in the skills-mix, and inequities in the geographical distribution of health professionals as among the major problems. A comprehensive set of policies was implemented within the HTP framework to address these problems. The article argues that these policies addressed some of the health workforce challenges, while on the other hand exacerbating others and hence may have resulted in increasing the burden on the workforce. This analysis is based on the review of secondary sources such as official reform documents and statistical information from national and international databases, and additional searches of academic databases and Turkish newspapers. The data set was analyzed manually by tracking the following rhetorical elements: health workforce, health human resource management, health care professionals, challenges, reform, Health Transformation Program, physicians, and satisfaction. Thematic analysis used to identify the themes in a theoretical or deductive way. So far HTP's governance reforms and health human resource policy have not encouraged meaningful participation of other key stakeholders in the governance of the health care system. Without effective participation of health professionals, the next stages of HTP implementation that focus on managerial reforms such as restructuring public hospitals, improving the primary care system and implementing new initiatives on quality improvement could be very difficult.
