Evaluation of health managers’ opinions about decentralization in health services

OBJECTIVE: It was aimed to determine the opinions of health-care managers on theimplementation of decentralization in health-care services. METHODS: The research is a cross-sectional and descriptive study.Sample of the study included 261 health managers.Research data were collected from health-care managers between June 8 and July 17, 2020, using face-to-face interviews technic by a questionnaire, in an average of 20–25 minutes. The obtained data were transferred to the computer environment and analyzed with the number, percentage, and Chi-square tests. RESULTS: About 52.5% of the health managers stated that health-care services should be provided by the public, 63.2% of them stated that health-care services should be a form of empowered decentralization, 41.8% of them stated that decentralization could be successful in Turkiye, 62.6% stated that decentralization would provide flexibility in health-care management, 70.3% of them said that it could find solutions to the problems, and 73.3% of them stated that it will improve employee performance whereas 44.9% of them stated that it would negatively affect providing services in integrity, 67.2% of them stated that it would cause regional inequalities, 73.2% of them said that local factors will intervene in health-care services, and 57.9% reported that it would weaken the central power. CONCLUSION: The majority of health-care managers prefer that health-care services are provided by the public health-care service and prefer the empowered decentralization of health-care services. More than half of the health-care managers expressed their positive views such as the fact that decentralization provides flexibility in health-care services, improve the performance, and participation in service along with the negative views such as the fact that decentralization negatively affects the service delivery, causes regional inequalities and intervention of local factors, and weakens the central power.