Transformation of health labour process at the city hospitals

Within the context of neoliberal policies which began to be implemented in the developed and developing capitalist countries since the 1980s, in Turkey, too, significant structural changes have been made in the health services. One of these comprehensive changes is the Health Transformation Programme (HTP) which was put into practice in 2003 in the health service sector. In the context of the HTP, neoliberal health "reforms" were put forward as a holistic program. As a complement of these reforms, with a legislative regulation made in 2005, public private partnership (PPP) model was put into practice in the health sector. In the scope of building health facility via the PPP model, "City Hospitals Project" was initiated. City hospitals which were started to be built immediately after the consecutive tenders have begun to put into service by year of 2017. As of 2021, there are 13 city hospitals which were opened and 6 city hospitals whose constructions are on-going. The city hospitals which are described as the second phase of the Health Transformation Programme made way for an administrative and spatial transformation in the process of health service production. Through this transformation, fundamental changes were emerged on the health labour process. This study aims to make a complete analysis of the effects brought about by the city hospitals into the health labour process within the framework of labour process theory. In this regard, the fundamental argument of this study is that with the city hospitals, a new labour regime emerged in the health labour process and this regime could be described as "Abulic Labour Regime" as a type of the Neoliberal Labour Regime. These arguments were supported through the findings of the case study made using a qualitative research design. Within the context of the case study carried out in the Adana City Hospital and Mersin City Hospital, data is collected through the techniques of in-depth interviews, group discussion, participant observation and nonparticipant observation.