Comparison of Provinces of Turkey In Terms of Accessing Health Care Services by Using Different Clustering Algorithms

Abstract

The most primary of the basic human rights is to have access to health care services. It is vital that all citizens in a country are able to get these services equally and homogeneously. Despite its importance, providing health services vary both internationally and nationwide in a country. Similarly, it may cause severe disparities and negative effects between individuals in a society. The primary concern of this study is to determine whether there is any difference between Turkey provinces in terms of accessing health care services, or not. Several clustering algorithms including hierarchical clustering, kmeans and partitioning around medoids (pam) are applied to the data set including 31 health indicators for the provinces in Turkey. After comparing these algorithms via using some measures for determining the number of clusters and cluster validity, the findings show that there are four distinct and significant clusters based on k-means clustering algorithm. It seems that these clustering results are in a a close reciprocal relationship with the economic development and geographical location of provinces. Clustering results are evaluated and interpreted according to these two important findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]