Assessment of the Role of Health System Reform Plan in Franchise Reduction for Patients Referred to University Hospitals in Iran

Background: Today health care system is considered as a important organization to achieve equity and improve the performance so it is necessary for policy makers and decision makers improve performance of health care system. This study was performed to evaluate the health care reform program with emphasis to decrease catastrophic payment of patients hospitalized in public hospitals.  Methods: This study is a descriptive cross-sectional design which was done from 8 May 2014 to 2 Sept. 2014. A sample of hospitals included 197 hospitals out of 550 hospitals affiliated to 57 universities of medical sciences which were selected randomly and were visited by experts. The main tool of this study was a standard checklist prepared by experts of headquarters of Minstry of Healh and Medical Education (MoHMD).  Results: Out of the entire hospitals studied, 79% were public and 21% were private. The highest mean and standard deviation was related to referral chain (2.71±0.53) as the most favorable dimension and the least mean and standard deviation was related to two dimensions of education and information of staff personnel (2.37±0.67) as the most unfavorable dimension. The results of study also indicated that there is statistical, significant correlation between dimension of informing personnel and type of hospitals. The difference in mean of sections scores was significant except for the dimension of investigating health documents at universities.  Conclusion: As a result, current health care reform plan will increase responsiveness and accessibility and will finally decrease unnecessary expenses in health market.