Decentralization in health services and its impacts: SWOT analysis of current applications in Turkey

Abstract

Decentralization and its applications are important issues of the strategic management operations. Since new public management (NPM) and new public business approaches have transformed structure of the non-profit organizations, decentralization and managing non-profit organizations as they are profit organizations have taken place in the field. In Turkey, health organizations have been decentralized and being managed by sub-managerial parts. On the other hand, the trend for decentralization since World War II in health services recently changed its direction to re- centralization in some countries. The paradigm of decentralization and re-centralization process and its impacts in Turkish Health system is evaluated in the research. According to this aim, SWOT analysis is performed, and strategic managerial decisions, its impacts and public health promotion applications are compared for before and after decentralization period.