Journal of

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Background: Patients are the raison d'etre of the hospitals therefore satisfying their needs and expectations is one of the most important duties of the hospitals. Consequently in recent decades patient satisfaction has been considered as a reliable measure for studying the quality of care and treatment. Hence in the present study, documents related to patient satisfaction in Iran was surveyed and the overall level of satisfaction was estimated using meta-analysis.
Materials and Methods: Articles on patient satisfaction were identified by searching different data bases using appropriate key words. Twenty six studies were extracted after applying inclusion criteria measures. The results were analyzed using Meta-analysis commands in STATA11 software.
Results: 14058 cases were surveyed in this 26 studies by meta- analysis. Based on the random-effect model the patient overall satisfaction percentage was estimated at 70.5 (CI:63.3-77.6) though based on fixed effect model.
Conclusion: The scale of patient satisfaction in Iran is in a proper level compared to other countries. Additionally, there has been an increasing trend in patient satisfaction in recent years, which might be attributable to measures such as using different methods of quality improvement, customer orientation and customer reverence.

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Background: One of the main goals of health sector evolution plan is reducing the amount of out of pocket payment by patients receiving hospital services in public sectors. This study aimed to assess the amount of out of pocket payment by inpatients in public hospitals affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science in Tehran city in 2015.
 
Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 405 discharged patients from four public and teaching hospitals were selected using convenient sampling method. Data were collected using a researcher made checklist and investigating the hospital bills. In order to data analysis, descriptive statistics and regression analysis were utilized through SPSS Software version16.
 
Results:  The amount of out of pocket payment was 10.2 percent included 9.9 percent formal payment, 0.2 percent bought & brought goods and 0.1 percent informal payment. The most portion of the hospital costs was related to medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, surgeries services and hosteling with 32.6, 20.6 and 17.36, respectively. Type of hospital, having surgery, average length of stay, family size and gender had significant effect on the out of pocket payment amount (p ≤ 0.05).
 
Conclusion: The amount of out of pocket payment by inpatient in public hospitals was in accordance with goal of the health sector evolution plan, which reveals the appropriate government support. It is recommended to tailor and implement enormous plans regarding outpatients and private sector in national level to attain sustained reduction in out of pocket payment.