Obligatory service requirement and physician specialist distribution in Turkey
Economics Bulletin, cilt.35, sa.1, ss.441-451, 2015 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 35 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2015
- Dergi Adı: Economics Bulletin
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.441-451
- Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Obligatory service requirement is one of the government policies which has been adopted, especially in developingcountries, to attract physicians to locations that are considered rather unattractive. Objective of this study is toanalyze the impact of the obligatory service requirement on specialist workforce distribution in public sector inTurkey, using a panel study with data from 63 provinces, in years 1990, 1995, and 2000. To identify the impact ofthe regulation we make use of the change in the regulation in 1995 which ended the requirement for the newgraduates to work for 2 to 4 years in a location specified by the government. We test whether the importance of asocio-economic development index as a determinant of specialist distribution differs across the periods. We alsoprovide summary statistics for the change in the workload of specialists. Results show that obligatory servicerequirements have been effective in directing specialist workforce to less developed parts of Turkey. When therequirement was lifted, socio-economic conditions of a region became a significant determinant of availability ofspecialists. Despite improvement in the specialist distribution, we observe no change in workload of specialistsindicating a significant shortage.