The funeral grant of civil servant old-age or invalidity pensioner who dies while receiving a pension is paid, upon request, primarily to his/her spouse. If there is no spouse, to his/her children. If there is no spouse and children, to his/her parents. If there is no parents, to his/her siblings. If there are no siblings, to those who certify that they have incurred expenses up to the amount of the invoice, not exceeding the amount of funeral grant to be made.

Risk management is the process of identifying, analysing, accepting, mitigating or transferring uncertainty in investment decisions. Fund managers apply risk management by analysing and attempting to quantify the potential loss of an investment and then acting accordingly.

The Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) of Türkiye pays pensions to approximately 16 million people every month. There are different types of insurance within the scope of the current law in our country. Payments to retirees are made on different days of the month (1st group on 17-26 of each month, 2nd group on 26-28 of each month, 3rd group on 1-5 of each month). Inappropriate payments frequently occur due to death-related reasons. The aim of this project is to reduce inappropriate payments and increase efficiency in payments.

In the Turkish social security system, some of the in-cash benefits are temporary incapacity allowances, funeral grants, breastfeeding grants, celiac and metabolic diseases payments, and disposable Underpad Payments. Those payments are made directly to individuals’ bank accounts.

The DG Universal Health Insurance (DG UHI) established under the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) of Türkiye develops policies and regulates the universal health insurance sector, which concerns almost the entire Turkish population.

Institutions are being transformed thanks to the integration of new technologies. This vision represents a corporate change with a social impact, reducing costs, simplifying processes and procedures, and raising awareness of the importance and benefits of this transformation.

Article 12 of Law No. 5508 on the Promotion, Protection of Maternity and Support for Breastfeeding establishes that maternity allowance should be paid to employed women by the social security scheme of Paraguay’s Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión Social – IPS). This amount is equivalent to 100 per cent of her salary at the time of delivery, and is paid for the prescribed months of rest. This used to be given to women in a single payment.

Pension refers to regular cash payments made to pensioners by the Social Security Institution (SGK) once every month. Central payments include payments other than pension. The purpose of this distinction is to eliminate the grievance caused by the waiting period between the monthly payment date and the monthly receipt date.

Central Payments include following items:

The issue of population growth and social security planning is one of the biggest challenges facing governments today, and is a key part of a good social security system that instils confidence in its members.

The Retirement and Pension Fund for Employees of Banks and Related Institutions (Caja de Jubilaciones y Pensiones de Empleados de Bancos y Afines) (Bank Fund, hereinafter) is in constant communication with its members. It therefore continuously updates its databases, in order to have a better understanding of members’ current realities, experiences and needs.

Between 2015 and 2017, the National Institute of Social Security (Instituto Nacional de Segurança Social – INSS) of Angola outlined a strategy to ensure the sustainability of social security with a strong focus on modernizing the management and control of social security revenues. With the resources to use information and communication technology (ICT) for its implementation, in the last five years, a set of initiatives have been progressively and intensively operationalized to end with most administrative processes.

Digital transformation is happening in institutions through the integration of new technologies. This vision represents an institutional and social change, optimizing available resources, reducing costs, shortening processes and procedures, and raising awareness of the importance and benefits of this transformation.

Those who do not have a workplace registration at the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SSI) and want to benefit from state aid, incentives or supports, will be able to get an “e-Government Application for Workplace Registration and Social Security Debt Status” document from the e-Government Application through the use of internal and external web services.

Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SSI) of Turkey makes monthly payments to 13 million pensioners through a centralized payment system. In this payment system, the bank account information that the pensioners request to receive the pension is obtained at the time of application. Some deductions are made legally from the pensions of pensioners. Examples of these deductions are enforcement of debt payments, alimony payment, healthcare co-payments for treatments and medications, tax and premium debt deductions, excessive or undue payment made for any reason.

Since unregistered employment among women in Türkiye is very high compared to developed European countries, the EU-supported “Operation on supporting registered women employment (Women-Up)” has been started by the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) in 2021.

Good practice in health – service quality.

As health-care systems have evolved to become more complex and due to the resultant increase in patients coming to harm in health care settings, patient safety has emerged as a health-care discipline.

International students are eligible for universal health insurance if they request it within three months of their first registration with the school.

These requests, which were previously made by submitting three different documents to Turkish Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) units, are now made online without any documents.

The Actuarial Advisory Office (Asesoría Actuarial) of the Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión Social – IPS) carried out an actuarial valuation of the Common Retirement and Pension Fund (Fondo Común de Jubilaciones y Pensiones). The valuation looks to comply with international best practices and observe the guidelines and standards of the International Standards of Actuarial Practice 2 (ISAP 2), and the ISSA-ILO Guidelines on Actuarial Work for Social Security, with technical support from the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Like most of the world’s countries, Paraguay has adopted lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These steps taken by the government have impacted the productive sector, leading to mass suspensions of employment contracts for persons insured with the Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión Social – IPS) of Paraguay.

The process of Proof of Life (PV) was based on stages, processes and the best technological resources available in 2011 (biometric collection). However, during the last decade there have been technological advances that have influenced and encouraged Angolan citizens to access to new technologies and allow the National Institute of Social Security (Instituto Nacional de Segurança Social – INSS) to progressively make available more agile and secure services to taxpayers, policyholders and pensioners.

Despite the significant growth of workers in the social security system during the last decade, more than 7 million workers still remain unintegrated.

Investments in operational and technological management to simplify and facilitate declaration and contribution collection, which have contributed to the results achieved, have not been sufficient to change this situation.

Paraguay’s Social Insurance Institute (Instituto de Previsión de Social – IPS) used to make sick leave payments at its administrative offices, which had associated administrative costs and meant beneficiaries had to visit the IPS service counter in person.

The refugee crisis triggered by the Syrian conflict has turned into being one of the top priority agenda items of international communities in the last years. Initially seen as a humanitarian emergency case, the mass migration of Syrians into neighbouring countries has brought new questions on their integration, development and burden-sharing.

Temporary incapacity for work allowance is the cash benefit paid due to work accidents, occupational diseases, sickness and maternity, and for the periods when the insured is not working under the conditions of Law No. 5510.

In addition, breastfeeding grant is paid as a one-off payment for each live birth to the insured or pensioner (uninsured wife of insured or of pensioner).

In Turkey, the Individual Pension Savings and Investment System Law No. 4632 stipulates that all employees under the age of 45 must be covered by the individual pension system at least once in their career. Prior to the automatization of the system, the amounts that were deducted from the salaries had to be manually transferred to the system and manually monitored every month.

The INST-CARE Project is mainly about supporting women employment by facilitating access to institutional childcare services. The objective is to support registered women employment with a cash transfer that partially covers institutional early childhood education and care (ECEC) costs (including basic fee, school service, food and stationery fee).

Supporting Registered Employment of Women through Promoting Educated Childcare Givers Operation (EDU-CARE) is about supporting certified caregivers and promoting registered employment of women. Financial support is provided to working mothers at risk of withdrawing from the labour market and who employ educated nannies. It is designed to promote the childcare giver profession and qualified women employment.

Between 2015 and 2022, various legislative, operational, and technological measures were developed and implemented to ensure the long-term sustainability of social security, with emphasis on the modernization and automation of declarations of remuneration, contributions management, payments, and regularization of the debt.

The challenges were enormous. Thus, a strategy was established for the progressive and integrated implementation of several measures:

Various contracts have been signed between the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SSI) of Turkey and public/private institutions and organizations regarding the supply of external prosthesis-orthoses, hearing assistive medical equipment, vision assistive medical equipment and medical consumables, which are among the medical equipment used by our universal health insureds during their outpatient treatment.

A project team consisting of participants from many different units was formed. Based on the SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner, and with the help of the tables kept in the database of our institution, the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SSI) of Turkey, 1,346 workplaces that were confirmed to be fake by audit reports between 2011 and 2016 were used as learning data. The behaviour patterns of these workplaces were examined, and formulas with nearly 100 parameters were developed to effectively detect bogus workplaces.

The medical devices list included in the Health Application Notification (SUT) are the basis for reimbursing medical devices. In the medical devices list, all the medical devices to be reimbursed are presented. On the other hand, since health service providers define their own medical devices, there is no application standard.  

To ensure the sustainability of social security in the long term, it was considered strategic to promote a contributory culture, responsibility and installmental payments as a strategy, amongst other measures, such as the restructuring and computerization of the social security inspection services.

With this project, we aimed to ensure insurance registration (which has been quite troublesome) and collect contributions by short message service (SMS). Through this, we have been able to inform the insured person, register the daily insurance premium, and reflect this on the operator’s (employer) telephone bill. The transaction amount is reflected on the mobile bill of operator and transferred to the Social Security Institution of Turkey (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) by the mobile telecommunication companies, namely, Turkcell, Vodafone or Türk Telekom.

Thanks to the adaptation of today’s developing technology to the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SSI), a number of reforms were made in order to facilitate transactions, save time and money by getting rid of bureaucratic obstacles and paperwork, and support the fight against unregistered and undeclared employment.

The good practice is mainly about promoting the registered employment of women by facilitating the integration into the labour market of women with small children who are at risk of withdrawal from the labour market and by supporting the formal work of women who provide home-based child-care services.

Temporary Incapacity Allowance Programme (e-Payment) is a software which the Turkish Social Security Institution put into operation in July 2012 especially for insured persons who have a service contract with one or more employers. In August 2015, it was upgraded to also include the self-employed.

This programme:

According to Law No. 5510 (Social insurance and Universal Health Insurance Law) some short- and long-term ınsurance benefits and similar payments, called 'Personal payments’ are paid through the beneficiaries' ID number on the 8th-14th days of a month. If someone who has payments sent to the bank misses these pre-determined days, the benefits are sent back to the SSI’s accounts. This process is repeated every month until the individual receives the payment.

Social Security Agreements Healthcare Entitlement Verification System (YUPASS as Turkish abbreviation) is a provision and activation system established for the insured persons of the countries with which Türkiye have a social security agreement to benefit from healthcare services during their stay or residence in our country. It works in integration with some of the online systems namely the National Identity Sharing System (KPS), Healthcare Reimbursement System Medical Ulak (MEDULA), Healthcare Entitlement Verification System (SPAS) and Financial Management Automation System (MOSIP).

The integration of student certificates to the Health Benefits Rights Programme (SPAS) involves the electronic flow of data between the Turkish Social Security Institution (SSI) and both the Higher Education Institution (YÖK) and the National Education Ministry (MEB) on up-to-date student certificates.

The groundwork to develop the software started at the beginning of 2013, and finished at the end of 2013, but the entire project was completed in February 2014 and the flow of data on student certificates began electronically.

Provision 18 of the Social Insurance and Universal Health Insurance Law (Code Number 5510) states that temporary incapacity allowances may be paid by employers by deducting the amount from their premium (contribution) payments.

The programme implements the deduction between the Turkish Social Security Institution and employers who signed a specific protocol with the SSI on the acceptance of the automatic deduction via e-payment (for the Temporary Incapacity Allowances) programme.

In order to prevent this exploitation, the "Biometric Identity Verification System" has been introduced in private and university hospitals. This new system has been put into practice first in twenty provinces (Agri, Amasya, Bartin, Bilecik, Bingöl, Bitlis, Burdur, Çankiri, Igdir, Karabük, Karaman, Kastamonu, Kilis, Mardin, Mus, Nevsehir, Nigde, Sinop, Sirnak, Yozgat) within the time period from 15.09.2012 to 15.10.2012. Implementation has started in the other 61 provinces in the time period from 15.11.2012 to 01.04.2013.

Before e-prescription, usage of manual prescriptions in the reimbursement procedure placed a burden on health-care service providers, pharmacies and the SSI as 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 provisions had to be given daily from the MEDULA pharmacy application. With the commissioning of the new application on 1 January 2012 across Turkey, the process of recording prescriptions in an electronic environment was initiated instead of manual prescriptions. JAVA and DB2 databases were used in the project. Various seminars and meetings were held for the users.

All processes in the provision of glasses, like tendering, ordering, shipping, purchasing, stock recording, orders to a patient, invoicing and payment have been provided electronically. Moreover, insurance holders, manufacturers, main optical suppliers and vendors, the Ministry of Health, the Social Security Institution, and the Public Procurement Agency share responsibility electronically.
The new barcode which has already been applied for the drug tracking system is being used for a pilot scheme for tracking medical devices in the optics area.

The Temporary Incapacity Allowance Programme is software which:

This programme displays the rights to health benefits by using only the citizen identification number and date. The aim of this programme is to give a good service to universal health insurance holders by using the electronic information on pensions, registration, citizenship identification and premiums and thus remove paper-based applications and burdensome visits to the Social Security Institution.

This programme will be used by health-care service providers all over the country; in other words the hospitals, pharmacies and opticians.

Therefore it was decided to sign contracts with the public health-care providers, including custom-made orthesis-prosthesis production centres, and on 27 November 2012 the contract was formally announced on the SSI's web site. Before the announcement, the draft contracts were discussed in workshops with representatives from the orthesis-prosthesis production centres. The information system was updated with the requirements for these contracts.

The Employee Suggestion System developed by the Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) in Turkïye is aimed to receive and effectively evaluate suggestions that will contribute to institutional development, based on the knowledge, skills and experience of the institutional staff. It is a system that includes receiving, evaluating, implementing and monitoring suggestions that increase the service efficiency, effectiveness and improvement of the personnel on matters related to the fields of activity of the institution.

It was decided to create a new system in which each stakeholder's agreement is provided. To that end medical device lists are requested from specialist doctors' associations. The collected draft lists are discussed in meetings with scientific commissions and sent to the Pharmacy and Medical Device Institution of Turkey under the Ministry of Health, which is responsible for Medical Device regulations in Turkey. Lists by branch are announced and firms are requested to match their products with the most suitable reimbursement code if it exists.

In subparagraph (c) of the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Turkish Social Security Institution (Sosyal Güvenlik Kurumu – SGK) Central Organization Working Regulation: “To collect, analyze and interpret information and data regarding the management of the Institution and the improvement of services and performance.”

In order to achieve the targets desired to be achieved in the provincial organization in line with its duty, it measures and reports the extent to which the determined performance targets have been achieved

The comprehensive approach includes training, grants, IT solutions, working groups of public and private sector representatives, academic support, and field studies.

The first phase was completed in June 2012:

The system has been implemented for more than two years. Our institution is open to the suggestions of about 26,000 staff.

The system, along with the appropriate methods for collecting staff suggestions, evaluating, and contributing to the personal development of our staff, aims to increase the quality and efficiency of our institution.

The Social Security Institution (SGK), at which the database of all health institutions in Turkey are kept, does not only have a strategic importance but it is also one of the biggest institutions in Turkey thanks to its gradually increasing data base size. The SGK renders active service to over 50 million Turkish citizens.

With the 5502 Social Security Institution Law, the Social Insurance Institution, the Retirement Fund and Bag-Kur (for the self-employed) were unified under one roof in Turkey. The merge aimed to create a system which includes and composes equal social security and insurance rights and obligations, to sustain a financial structure for the whole population. The creation of a new social security system also created problems in public because of the changes in rights and obligations. Therefore, giving correct information to questions of public about their rights and obligations is essential.

The volume of financial transactions arising from these payments amounts to approximately 250 billion USD. This high volume of transactions obliges our institution to create a well-functioning financial management and automation mechanism that enables us to provide better services.

The analysis carried out by the General Directorate revealed that many processes and requests for too many documents were unnecessary and were the main reason for having an unnecessarily long application period. In 2008, several legal changes were introduced to address this issue. Hence, requested documents were simplified and unnecessary phases in the assessment of applications were abolished.

The objectives were to:

In general, there are four web services used by hospitals to integrate to their health information management systems. The last version of the MEDULA system was implemented on 01.04.2009 with no problem. Design of the system is done by SSI personnel and any outside source was used.

This project has been developed based on an agreement between the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security for the purpose of "Strengthening of Health Services Finance Management and Infrastructure development." UBB uses international standards of the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) and the Global Medical Device Nomenclature (GMDN) for the nomenclature and classification.