Recent Amendments to the Private Hospitals Regulation

Certain changes have been made in October 2022 and January 2023 on the Private Hospitals Regulation (“Regulation”) which has come into force upon publication in the Official Gazette dated 27 March 2002 and numbered 24708.

Initially, under the Regulation Amending the Private Hospitals Regulation (“First Amendment”) published in the Official Gazette dated 6 October 2022 and numbered 31975, certain limitations were imposed on self-employed physicians who have their own private clinics to treat their patients in private hospitals as per the following principles:

• Execution of an annual contract: Self-employed physician with a private clinic and the relevant private hospital must enter into an annual contract. This contract can only be entered into with a private hospital that is licenced in the relevant branch.
• Existence of vacant positions: The private hospital can enter into contracts with self-employed physicians to the extent there are vacant positions in the relevant branch and in the number of such vacant positions. If there are no vacant positions in the relevant branch, the number of contracted self-employed physicians will be limited to 15% of the total number of physicians in such branch.
• Upper limit: The private hospital cannot enter into contracts with physicians that have their own private clinics in a number exceeding one third of the total number of physicians in the relevant branch.

Following the First Amendment, the Regulation was further changed through the Regulation Amending the Regulation on Private Hospitals published in the Official Gazette dated 7 January 2023 and numbered 32066 (“Second Amendment”) which entered into force on 7 January 2023. The Second Amendment, among other things, introduced new provisions regarding treatment of patients by self-employed physicians at private hospitals. These are as follows:

• The principle mentioned above introduced through the First Amendment regarding the determination of the number of the self–employed physicians with whom a contract shall be executed based on the number of vacant positions in the relevant branch has been removed. As such, the only limitation to be observed is the upper limit introduced through the First Amendment mentioned above. Accordingly, private hospitals can execute contracts with a number of self-employed physicians with private clinics that shall not exceed one-third of the total number of physicians in the relevant branch.
• Self-employed physicians over the age of 60 will not be subject to the staff limitation explained above.
• If the physician cannot treat a patient in the private hospital with which the physician executed a contract, a special permission can be obtained from the Provincial Health Directorate on a case by case basis, in order to allow the physician to perform the procedure in another private hospital.