Analysis of the Relationships between Compulsory Health Spending, Doctors, Hospital Beds and Hospital Stays for Turkiye

A significant part of health expenditures is allocated to hospitals, but whether the funds invested in resources are used successfully or not is determined by assessing factors such as the number of hospital beds and the number of doctors. Additionally, the length of hospital stay is a critical performance indicator. The objective of this paper is to investigate the mutual relationships between compulsory health spending, the number of doctors, the number of hospital beds, and hospital stays in the case of a developing country. We focus on Turkiye using the annual data on compulsory health spending (U.S dollars/capita), the number of doctors (per 1.000 inhabitants), the number of hospital beds (per 1.000 inhabitants), and the length of hospital stay (days) for the period of 1994-2020. In our analysis, following testing the stationary properties of the variables, we employ the Fourier causality tests proposed by Enders and Jones (2016) and Nazlioglu et al. (2016) to analyze the causality links between compulsory health spending, the number of doctors, the number of hospital beds and the length of hospital stay. Our findings confirm the evidence of causal runs from compulsory health spending to the number of hospital beds and from the number of doctors to compulsory health spending in the relevant period.