The Impact of Provider-Defined Service Improvements for Family Planning in Turkey

Amy Tsui, Johns Hopkins University
Ersin Topcuoglu, Management Sciences for Health, Turkey
Pinar Senlet, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

Contraceptive demand may go unmet as a result of low quality family planning (FP) services. Service supply factors may not meet standards of care desired by current and prospective clients. Studies of the quality of family planning care emphasize the importance of contraceptive choice, provider competence, and provider-client interactions, among other factors. This study addresses improvements in service standards identified, defined and implemented by public and private providers of family planning care in Turkey over the period 1998 to 2001. A local task force of representatives from the health care system met to define and set minimum standards of care. The hypothesis tested is whether provider-defined standards have an impact on family planning client utilization levels and client-reported care outcomes. Our study provides relatively strong empirical support, given longitudinal data and panel regression analysis techniques, that such improvements can benefit client care and their contraceptive needs.