Assessment of Family Physicians Service Quality Gap in Rural Regions of Khorasan Razavi Province, before and after the Health Reform Plan

Introduction: The first step in improving the quality of health care is to evaluate the quality of services, and the goal of implementing the healthcare reform plan is to increase the quality of services. The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of family physician services in rural of Khorasan Razavi province before and after the health reform plan. Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was conducted on people referred to health centers in rural areas of Khorasan Razavi province before and after health reform plan. In the year 2012, 435 and in the year 2016, 354 SERVQUAL standard questionnaires, that validity and reliability confirmed, by clustering and simple randomized method were completed. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and Mann-Whitney statistics by SPSS 19 at a significance level of 0.05. Results: The difference between the mean scores of expectation before (4.45±0.56) and after (4.36±0.53) the plan was not much (P ≤ 0.047), but the mean of perceptions after (4.01±0.67) the plan was higher than before (3.52±0.82) the plan (P ≤ 0.001). There was a significant statistical difference between the gap of expectations and perceptions in all aspects of the model before (-0.93±0.90) and after (-0.35±0.79) the health reform plan (P ≤ 0.001). Conclusions: Reducing the quality gap between expectations and perceptions in all aspects of family physician quality of services suggests that the health reform plan has been accompanied by an increase in the quality of services. However, there is need to improve the quality of services with priority the dimensions of empathy and assurance.