Comparison of Health Status Indicators with Multidimensional Scaling and The Multi Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Health is important factor in determining the pogress and developmental levels of countries. One of the goals of the country's health system is to raise the health level of the community as much as possible. The health performance of the community can be calculated and measured using various indicators. These are called health status indicators. AIM: The aim of this study is to determine the position of Turkey in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries before and after the health transition program and make net performance ranking of countries in terms of health status indicators. METHODS: The Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) was used to determine OECD countries' position and the Multi Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis (MOORA) method was used to calculate the net performance ranking of countries according to health status indicators. RESULTS: According to the performance ranking analysis, while Switzerland has the best performance among 34 OECD countries in both 2002 and 2014, Turkey has the worst performance in terms of health status indicators in 2002. As a result of the MDS analysis for 2014, Switzerland and Japan are similar countries in terms of health status indicators and Turkey, Chile, Hungary, Mexico, Slovakia are similar countries. CONCLUSION: Despite significant positive developments in terms of Turkey's health outcomes in recent years, there are still considerable differences between Turkey and developed countries. It is suggested that countries should improve their own models in order to achieve excellence in health systems, besides benefiting from each other's experiences based on good examples.