Central Physician Appointment System in Turkey

Central Physician Appointment System (MHRS) is one of health services in Turkey that allow to citizens to make an appointment from the hospital they want to the doctor of their choice. It is an application where citizens can call 182 (MHRS Call Center) for 2nd and 3rd level Hospitals and Dental Health Centers affiliated to the Ministry of Health and make an appointment with the hospitals and physicians they want from live operators or via the websites.

Before implementation the MHRS application, many hospitals used an appointment system within their own organization. With MHRS, it is planned to carry out polyclinic services and public hospitals appointments from one center. Although there are similar examples at regional level in the world, it is the first physician appointment system conducted from one center throughout Turkey.

MHRS works on a 24/7 in order to facilitate citizens’ access to health services and to increase efficiency in health services provision. Citizens can use all of this way to make an appointment from 182-line, mobile device applications, hospitals, family physicians and web addresses like:

• www.hastanerandevu.gov.tr
• www.ailehekimligirandevu.gov.tr
• mhrs.gov.tr
• e-nabiz.gov.tr

With looking at MHRS indicators

• For 31,854 specialist physicians, approximately 95% of the physicians who provide outpatient services, an average of 296 thousand appointments were made per day, 78.56% of them were realized.
• Approximately 18% of the appointments were canceled by both citizens and physicians. In case of physician cancellations, from MHRS citizens are called and informed, and a new appointment is made for them.
• The rate of having an appointment examination has been 39%. most preferred provinces in proportion to make an appointment are Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. The provinces with the lowest number of appointments are Ardahan, Bayburt and Siirt.
• The branches with the most appointments are Dentistry (General Dentistry), Internal Medicine (Internal Medicine) and Gynecology and Obstetrics. The branches with the least appointments are Underwater Medicine and Hyperbaric Medicine, Pediatric Urology and Geriatrics.
• In period of time, the 1.5 million appointments given, 67.65% were from 182 line, 19% from MHRS Web, 9.84% from mobile devices, 3.51% from other appointment channels (hospitals, family physicians and ALO 171).

In MHRS, Priority of appointment has been initiated for high-risk pregnant women, patients over 65 years of age and the disabled. Expanding the use of MHRS Web Portal and Mobile Device applications with foreign language support and efforts will be made to promote it. With sound analysis, faster and professional quality studies have started as a pilot project. As a result, it is aimed to increase the appointment quota allocated to MHRS.

In COVID-19 pandemic MHRS used for making appointment for COVID-19 vaccination.

The objectives of MHRS

• Better resource planning in hospitals Increasing: citizen / patient satisfaction by making (effective and efficient planning of the use of workforce and equipment), reducing queues in hospitals.
• Measuring resource use and distribution in hospitals (through the effective and efficient implementation of the use of labor, machinery and equipment); increasing the provision, efficiency and quality of health services.
• Helping to develop health policies with MHRS data.

MHRS Statistics:

A total of 264 million appointments were made

• 83 million web appointments in 4 years
• A total of 10 million appointments were made in 2 years with mobile devices

Appointments are:

• 62.67% of them over the 182 phone line,
• 31.10% via MHRS Web,
• 4.11% from applications on mobile devices,
• 2.12% was created from other channels.
• Improvement activities are carried out by measuring citizen satisfaction through social media monitoring.

Maryam Ghalandari