Is a Reorganization Possible for Providing Health Services in the Rural Regions of Turkey Republic?

Objective: This study aims to discuss the medical care services in rural areas and the reorganization of hospitals. There are various problems such as human resources and transportation in improving the availability of medical services in the rural population of Turkey distributed to a large area. Material and Methods: A questionnaire was sent to health administration units in 81 cities between 2004 and 2007. This structured questionnaire was orientation based and questioned health units, rural area transportation times, personnel status and opinions about reorganization of community hospitals. Eight one data forms were returned from the total of 81 forms. Form return rate was 100%. Results: Total population in rural areas of Turkey is 20838397. Mobile medical care should be provided to 11543141 individuals in 42493 sites in 850 towns. Each village needs to be visited for vaccination, neonatal and newborn care follow up at least once per month. This means 1431 of 31495 villages need to be visited each day. To solve the problem, the county hospitals are to be strenghtened along with more functional reorganization to enable efficient utilization of the current number of personnel. Conclusion: Reorganization will improve efficiency and decrase need for medical personnel thus, even with the current insufficient number of health personnel, quality of medical care to rural sites will improve with mobile teams once a month will be possible. Feedback received from all cities indicate that there is a need for reorganization to provide more efficient and better quality medical care services in rural areas.