HOME HEALTH SERVİCES IN TURKEY: A CASE STUDY BASED ON PATIENT SURVEY OF HOME HEALTH CARE USERS IN THE PROVINCE OF ANKARA

Abstract

With the aging of the population, it is important to develop alternative models of providing medical as well as other support services related to psychological, social, economic, and legal needs of the elderly. Developing an effective and efficient home health care system will be helpful in improving the quality of life of home health patients.

This study was conducted to understand the quality of home health services offered through the Ministry of Health (MoH) hospitals to the population in Ankara. Home health patients were randomly selected from the service users in eight MoH hospitals. Information was collected on socio-economic and demographic characteristics of patients and their satisfaction with the services received. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were carried out understand factors affecting patient satisfaction with home health services.

The results indicate that a significant proportion of home health service users are not elderly. Most of the users of the service belong to very low economic status. Average satisfaction score improves with age of the patient but declines with patient’s economic status. Home health care workers being skilled, being sensitive to the needs of the patients and not tired when they arrive for service provision, significantly improves reported satisfaction scores of patients. In general, satisfaction level with home health care service is very high in the Ankara province. In almost 100% cases, patients report timely arrival of home health care workers. In almost all cases, the first home visit happened within five days after the submission of application for home health services.

Home health service is a relatively new system in Turkey but the results indicate that the system is working well in general. The service, however, needs to be integrated with other social support mechanisms in place to improve quality of life of home health care patients in a more effective manner.

Keywords

• home healthcare services, patient satisfaction, health worker attributes, social services

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