evaluating the outsourcing of nursing services in kashani hospital, isfahan, iran

introduction: hospitals are required to focus on core activities which are inevitable affair. the sensitivity of the monitoring and supervision mechanism as well as preserving and enhancing the quality of outsourced services prevent new problems in this area. methods: this was a descriptive and applied study which was done by case study (pretest-posttest) method. outsourcing nursing services of clinical wards (ent and surgery) of kashani hospital was studied. data were extracted from the questionnaire (internal customer's satisfaction), semi-structured interviews with officials and also survey of financial and administrative documents as well as records related to the topic. the validity of thee questionnaire was approved using the standard form of the satisfaction in isfahan university of medical sciences and its reliability was based on calculating cronbach’s alpha. results: the findings indicated an increased number of graduate nurses per bed to fulfill the main goal of outsourcing. however, achieving this goal was accompanied with increasing costs per bed and resulted in increased total costs of the hospital after outsourcing. in addition, the intangible changes in internal customer satisfaction with the performance of non-governmental sector have been achieved. conclusion: while outsourcing should bring about staff and patients' satisfaction and increase the efficiency and effectiveness, outsourcing nursing workforce strategy led to severe loss of efficiency. therefore, the adopted strategy did not meet the productivity for the hospital.