Abstract
Background/aim
The aim of this study was to present the immigrant health services of Turkey within a general framework, and to evaluate the health services provided by a single center that offers tertiary health services as an important reference hospital in Turkey in the framework of immigrant health services and the direct costs of these services.
Subject and methods
This is a retrospective and descriptive observational study in which the development of immigrant health services in Turkey was evaluated and the records of the immigrant health services kept by the related center’s International Guest Patient Unit between the years of 2014 and 2018 were reviewed.
Results
The number of individual immigrant patients applying to our center was 30,480, and their total application number was 89,203. A total of 84,781 (95%) of the applications were outpatient and 4422 were (5%) inpatient. The most common diagnosis according to the ICD-10 system was other general symptoms and signs (R68.8). The cost per outpatient was calculated as 85TL, while the cost per inpatient was calculated as 4945TL, all covered by the Government of Turkey.
Conclusion
It was observed that immigrants most frequently applied to the emergency services of this center and were mostly admitted to the general surgery clinic. When the most frequent diagnoses in this study were evaluated, it was seen that the health problems of these immigrants can usually be solved with primary health services. Increasing the utilization of primary health services for immigrants will prevent the unnecessary usage of emergency services as well as being more cost-efficient.
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Data availability
Not applicable.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Change history
06 December 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-021-01668-x
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Acknowledgements
We thank all staff of the International Guest Patient Unit of Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital for their technical support.
Funding
No funding was received for conducting this study.
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Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
• Conception.
TB, TEY, İK, İŞ, AÖ.
• Design.
TB, TEY, MTB, TY, İK, İŞ, AÖ.
• Supervision.
TB, TEY, MTB, AÖ.
• Funding.
TB, MTB.
• Materials.
TB, TEY, MTB, TY, İK, İŞ, AÖ.
• Data Collection and Processing.
TB, TEY, MTB.
• Analysis–Interpretation.
TB, MTB, İK, İŞ, AÖ.
• Literature Review.
TB, TEY, MTB, TY.
• Writing.
TB, TEY, MTB, TY.
• Critical Review.
TEY, TY, İK, İŞ, AÖ.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Ethics approval
The details of the study were reviewed and approved by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of Ankara Numune Research and Training Hospital with the decision number E-19-2498 on February 7, 2019.
Consent to participate
Not applicable.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Additional information
Prior presentation
This study was presented as an oral presentation at WONCA Europe Conference 2019, Bratislava, June 26–29
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The original online version of this article was revised due to missing Turkish Liras symbol throughout the text.
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Babacan, T., Yılmaz, T.E., Babacan, M.T. et al. Evaluation of immigrant health services in Turkey: a single-center study. J Public Health (Berl.) 30, 2491–2498 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-021-01534-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-021-01534-w