ABSTRACT
The costs of running a recently established family planning program in the Turkish social security system were measured and compared with the costs of providing the medical services and nonmedical benefits for pregnant women. The undiscounted cost savings from averting pregnancy were estimated to exceed the program's recurrent costs by 17.6 to 1. Cost savings represent only 1 percent of all of the system's medical expenditures, but the family planning program is in an early stage, and potential savings could influence management decisionmaking regarding investments in specialized maternity hospitals.
PIP: Turkey's Ministry of Health operates hospitals and dispensaries in urban and rural areas to serve the majority of the general population. The SSK/SEATS project, funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was launched in Turkey in July 1992 to provide technical and financial support to enable the Social Insurance Institute (SSK) to provide quality family planning services throughout its existing network of health facilities. By early 1994, family planning services were offered in 56 SSK hospitals, and an estimated 91,000 couples were receiving services. As the time approached for USAID to transfer the responsibility for purchasing family planning commodities to SSK, the SSK directorate compared the costs of operating extended family planning services in SSK facilities with the costs of providing the medical services and nonmedical benefits for the would be pregnant women. The undiscounted cost savings from averting pregnancy were estimated to exceed the program's recurrent costs by 17.6 to 1.
