Journal of

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Background: Suitable budget allocation of organizational activities can deliver the resources distribution, enabling operational monitoring and providing expected access to the cost results. The aim of this study was to calculate the cost of final units in one of the Armed Forces Hospitals.

Materials and Methods: One of the Armed Forces Hospitals selected in 2013.Data gathered from all cost centers to costs calculation and evaluated based on theory of Activity-Based Costing analysis. General wards and intensive care units, operating rooms, dental, emergency and dialysis were considered as final units. Cost calculation performed using Excel software version 2007.

• Total cost of hospital was 244,416 million rails in 2013 which direct and indirect allocated costs were 52% and 48%, respectively. The CCU, surgery ward, ICU and operating rooms had the highest and clinics and dental had the lowest in case of costs. More than 50 percent of the direct costs of all the units have been spent on manpower except the operating room. After labor costs, medication costs accounted for the largest percentage of direct spending units.

Conclusion: Paying attention to human resources in terms of number and distribution of all units especially in the final units, also considering medications use particularly in middle units and consumables in overhead ones especially can be result in reduction and adjusting hospital costs.

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Background: Nowadays, Patient Safety is considered as a fundamental concept of the healthcare system. Hence, recognizing the effective factors such as illegible orders, dosage errors, and drug usage can reduce serious side effects leading to the patients' disability, prolonged hospitalization and even death.

Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical study performed as a cross-sectional one. 1800 inpatient records selected in a teaching hospital during one year. The physician  first order was examined through a self-adminstrated checklist including physicians’ ID and workshifts, and variables  like legibility and recorded dosage. Data analysis conducted via SPSS using descriptive statistics and analytical statistics tests.

Results: Among 1800  studied records, there were 66.3% recorded by male, 17.6% illegible, 3.2% with no  stamp, 8.2% without signing, 11.9% without time and 4.9% with no date.23% of physician records didn't have coherence and logical sequence, 69.5% did not indicate to the primary items, 17.8% with no medicine dosage, 21.8% without pharmaceutical forms, 11.5% with no usage time, 25.9% without usage method, 14.3% had scribbles and 13% were devoid of numbering.  Also, there were a significant relation between demographic variables and some medical recording errors. 

Conclusion: it is necessary to endeavor physicians in patient records documentation improvement and can be used some strategies such as educating the newly arrived residents, considering commendatory techniques and record periodic evaluation.

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Background: Partnership between public and private section is the cooperation between institutions in these sectors which perform to attain common goals and eliminate the limitations. This study aimed at investigating the important criteria for attraction of private section in health sector.

Material and Methods: Based on studies and sample surveys, governments have essential role for codification of health policies and special programs in any country. In recent years, the costs of delivered health services increased exponentially and governments are looking for alternative mechanisms for cost reduction; meanwhile, the increased capacity in social programs is accompanied with considerable investments in infrastructures. This article investigated the utilization of different models by previous literature assessment in public- private partnership field and determined key and substantial criteria for these projects' success /failure. Although, the experience of their implementation is still very limited in our country and there is no accurate assessment based on case studies.

Results: Based on study results, some criteria like possibility of returning part of participation costs in tendering for tender, goals and responsibility's clarity, fair and correct mutual risk attocation , lower public costs through less incumbency, private section motivation, clear mechanism monitoring ,conflict resolution and supporting policies from private investment have essential role for successful public- private partnership which special attention should  be drawn.

Conclusion: Governments can have a suitable partnership with private sector in order to prevent increasing costs in rebuilding, maintenance and operation of public facilities like hospitals, considering budget limitations in public sector, providing innovation through opportunism in private section and more efficient risk management.

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Background: The issue of access to urban services is one of the important one that affects different aspects of urban affairs. In some cases, lack of proper access to some land, people's health is exposed to risk, for example Health care services especially in hospitals that impose requirements in a timely and appropriate access to it for all members of society. This study aimed at analyzing the distribution of hospitals and locates new hospitals regards to the lack in Saqqez city.

Materials and Methods: This study was a cross sectional and descriptive one. In order to classify and analyze data, the models of AHP and network analysis have been used. Also, ARC / GIS software and Expert choice has been used to map layers.

Results: According to assessed studies about the distribution of available hospitals and determination of their standard performance, 62.93 percent of the city area has not access to the hospitals.

Conclusion: This study results showed that hospitals in terms of compatibility with other land uses and access is inappropriate in the city. Thus, optimal areas for construction of new hospitals in five final maps from very good to very poor were classified and proposed using combining different layers of effective land uses.  

                                                                                                                          

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Background: Many hospitals of Iran make use of their therapeutic capacities in order to attract medical tourists and increase revenue and efficiency of their affiliated hospitals. This issue has major benefits for hospital and tourists. This study assessed the potential of medical tourists' attraction in a military hospital in Tehran.

Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive- analytical one which used secondary data to analyze. Data gained from quality improvement and finance offices, recipients of service and health information management units from the first of 2014 to the first semester of 2015. Strategic plan document were used to analyze the opportunities and strengths points.

Results: The mean of studied hospital performance indicators like bed occupancy rate, length of stay, Bed turnover, rate of admissions to bed, mortality and bedsores rates, nosocomial infections, medication error, patients' rights and patient satisfaction were  4.68 ,  3.3,  5.1 , 6.6 ,  5.2, 1,  69, 9.74 , 70 percent respectively. The strengths points of the studied hospital were diverse expertise, updated equipment and minimum waiting time.

Conclusion: Because of skilled man power, physical resources and especially modern equipment, the hospital does not need huge investment in medical tourists' attraction. This issue will increase admission, productivity and satisfaction of clients and staff.

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Background: Considering the importance of standard precautions to prevent needle stick injuries and health care staff, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of educational interventions to improve adherence to standard precautions, health belief model based on professional clinical staff needle stick two hospital "yaftabad" and "Ghiyasi" done.

Materials and Methods: This study was an experimental study of two group. The study population was 90 persons of professional clinical staff Shohada Hospital Yaftabad as the intervention group and 90 patients from the hospital Ghiyasi as compared to randomly selected and three part questionnaire including demographic, structures, health belief model , and practice questions were completed. In analyzing the data, descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used.

Results: At baseline, the two groups regarding demographic variables, health belief model structures and functional do not different between them. After intervention structures perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, perceived barriers, self-efficacy and performance of the experimental group showed statistically significant change (p< 0.05) that the effect of education based on health belief model.

Conclusion: education based on health belief model, you can increase the level of knowledge and capacity building and efficacy in clinical staff needs people to observe standard precautions

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Background: The quality of services is a comparison of the customer´s perspective (expectations) with what it has received. If the expectations are more than perceptions, the quality of received services is not sufficient based on customer´s view which resulted in his/her dissatisfaction. The present study performed with the purpose of determining the quality of provided and excepted services to outpatients among hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

Material and Methods: The present study is a descriptive- analytics and cross sectional one which has been done in 2015. The study population included all outpatients attending hospital clinics affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences.The sample size was calculated 225 participants based on formula. In order to data gathering in quality of provided and expected services, a 22-items standard questionnaire of Servqual was utilized. Data analysis performed by SPSS using paired t-test, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests.

Results: The study findings represented that there was a negative gap in the quality of services provided. The highest gap was related to accountability (-0.97) and the lowest gap related to tangibles factors (-0.69) .Moreover, regarding to  relationship between demographic variables with perceived service quality, there were significant relationship between  insurance type with reliability and empathy dimensions and supplementary insurance with tangibles factors and reliability.

Conclusion: Negative gap (higher expectations than perception) in all aspects of quality improvement is required in all dimensions. Especially, it is necessary to adopt some strategies in the accountability dimension. Reforming management processes, reducing waiting times and increasing employees' motivation in order to achieve appropriate accountability are in this kind of strategies.

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Background: Health of hospital staff has a determinant role in increased productivity and since the main mission of hospitals is community health promotion, in order to achieve this important issue, monitoring, maintaining and improving general health is essential; this study developed to assess general health of staff affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences and identify its related factors.
Materials and Methods: This Cross-Sectional, Descriptive-analytical study was conducted among 320 staff members of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences who selected using random sampling. In order to data collection, the General Health questionnaire was used. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS software through t-test and ANOVA tests.
Results: Study findings revealed that 47.5% of participants had psychological disorders suspiciously; prevalence of physical symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction and depression were 53.9%, 49.3%, 79.5% and 14.6% respectively. There was a significant relation between general health and demographic features such as gender, marital status, major, job department, housing situation and type of employment (p<0.05).  Also, the personal characteristics of managers influenced on the general health staff.
Conclusion: General Health of staff in hospitals Tehran University of Medical Sciences in comparison with similar studies at inside and abroad is not in good condition, therefore, it is recommended that policy makers and managers concerned the programs and solutions towards priorities in order to promote health personnel.

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Background:  Equitable and suitable access of all citizens to the urban public service is one of the primary principles of urban planning, which with the rise of the justice-centered approaches in recent decades has been double care. In the meantime, access to health services as one of the vital public service has greater sensitivity. This research has been performed with aim of identify enjoyed and non-enjoyed regions regarding health care and its distribution assessment applications in Tabriz city.
Materials and Methods: For the access analysis ARC GIS software, specially Network Analysis tool and Williamson and entropy index and has been utilized. Also, considering respective per capita, Tabriz city population needs and the existing deficiencies have been specified.
Results: The study results indicate that %76 of Tabriz city population have optimal access to healthcare facilities. In contrast, in the analysis of access to hospitals %36 of population have optimal access to theme and %64 have Undesirable access. Also, in urban zones analyses unit, based on Williamson index analysis, the index was calculated 0.67 to Tabriz city, which indicates an imbalance in the distribution of health care Facilities in the Tabriz city.
Conclusion: In general, zone 2 has the most balanced distribution of health care facilities and zone 9 is suffering from imbalanced distribution of health care facilities. It is suggested that in order to reduce the inequalities in the enjoyment of health care facilities, proper assessment about to existing facilities and future planning, in terms of Threshold, capacity and access should be conducted.

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Background: Necessity of development, quantity and quality improvement needs of medical tourists had been unavoidable based on medical tourism growth with its competitive function. This study aimed to determine satisfaction rate of medical tourists referee to Tabriz hospitals to get treatment services.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive and analytical study was conducted on 82 medical tourists referee to all wards of selected hospitals using convenient sampling method in Tabriz city. Data was collected using a-28 items valid and reliable researcher made questionnaire. Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated 0.708. In order to data analysis, SPSS Software version 23 was utilized. Also, Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to assess the association between different aspects of patients’ satisfaction.
Results: Satisfaction rate was obtained in five main aspects including cultural problems (51.88%), structural issue (57.50%), insurance payment system (16.04%), information system and communication channels (41.34%) the economic challenges (50.35%). The information system and communication channels had high effect on economic aspects (p<0.001).
Conclusion: It seems necessary that health policy makers and managers pay more attention to foreign medical tourists and faced challenges correction in order to change Tabriz city to a medical tourism center of excellence and improving regional economic development. 

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Background: microbial contamination of hospital wards is one of the most important factors in the transmission of hospital infections among inpatients in hospital units.
This study aimed to analyze the error in the diagnosis of microbial contamination in the hospital's intensive care unit and its root causes analysis in 2015.
 
Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in three stages. The first stage conducted as a case report. The second stage was designed to identify the factors affecting the occurrence of error by Root Causes Analysis and conducting an interview and panel. Third stage was provided using self-made questionnaire and Delphi technique to obtain appropriate strategies to identified errors. In order to data analysis SPSS software was utilized.
 
Results: The main causes of hospital infections were organizational and managerial causes, task related causes, laboratory-related causes, causes associated with training, causes associated with work teams and causes related to working conditions in the intensive care unit. The study findings extracted from the Delphi technique revealed that simple actions such as hand wash and disposable appliances usage are significantly effective in hospital infection prevention.
 
Conclusion: One of the most important ways of preventing and controlling hospital infections is investigating the root causes of these infections. Also, personnel training regarding effective methods to nosocomial infections’ care and control and patient safety culture should be considered by managers.

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Background: Today, in order to reduce costs along with the realization of superior qualities, assignment of all or part of the responsibility for performing a specific organizational task outside the organization is a great importance. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the role of corporate culture on the quality of working relationships in outsourcing activities at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
 
Materials and Methods: This research was a correlational study. The study population consisted of all the staff of the outsourced units of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Staff who were in contact with outsourced units included 600 individuals. To collect data, a questionnaire based on Zoghbi et al study (2014) was utilized. Two hundred fourteen analyzable questionnaires were collected using multistage cluster sampling method.
 
Results: Structural simulation results with LISREL software revealed that corporate culture had a positive impact on the quality of working relationships during outsourcing of activities. Hierarchical culture was associated with adverse impacts on disruptions in customer service and orientation. Ethnic culture had a positive effect on both components. The market culture had a positive impact on obstruction and had a negative effect on customer oriented. Temporary culture had no significant impact on both of components.
 
Conclusion: given that the quality of working relationships between staffs of outsourced units and organizational staffs is of utmost significance for organizational productivity; the interest of managers affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences regarding corporate culture, and also, strengthening hierarchical and ethnical culture is noteworthy to improve customer orientation and reducing disruptions in customer services.
 

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Background: Insurance companies sometimes do not reimburse hospitals completely. Reducing the amount of deduction of bills increases hospital’s income and efficiency. This study compares the deductions imposed by social insurance organization on Imam Khomeini hospital’s bills before and after the implementation of health transformation plan.
 
Material and Methods: Data of this descriptive-descriptive study calculated from the deductions applied to the hospital of outpatient and inpatient bills of social insurance organization in second six months of 2013 (before implementation of health transformation plan) and the same time of 2014 (after implementation of of health transformation plan). This quasi experimental study was conducted using the data. Data was analyzed by SPSS software using paired t test.
 
Results: The bill deductions in the second six months of 2013 compare to the same time in 2014 were 2.9 and 11.1 percent, respectively. Hospital bill deductions increased 282.8 percent after the health transformation plan implementation. The deductions on inpatients and outpatients records increased 6 and 12 times, respectively. Most deduction was imposed on surgical and laboratory bills in 2013 and on radiotherapy, chemotherapy and hoteling bills in 2014.
 
Conclusion: Deductions of hospital bills extremely increased from social insurance organization after implementation of health transformation plan. In order to identify deductions causes, providing related education to staff and physicians and relative process improvement are necessary.

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Background: Recent years, many efforts provided to design hospitals ;as the most stressful environments; to  reduce stress , improve health , patients' remedy  and satisfaction based on patients 'points of view. This study aimed to identify the physical and mental factors effective on patient view in hospitals of Yazd city.
 
Materials and Methods:  Regarding the purpose, this study was an applied one which used survey and correlation methods. In order to determine the normality of data distribution, Kolmogorov – Smirnove, the type, amount and direction of relation between the variables Persons correlation coefficient and linear regression analysis were used, respectively. Additionally, in order to clarify the multi regression model, variance analyze method of ANOVA has been utilized. According to data gathering literature and instrument review have been utilized.
 
Results: Study results revealed that there was a significant relation between physical factors and individuals' satisfaction (P<0.05). There was no significant association between mental factors and individuals' satisfaction. 
 
Conclusion: It seems it is necessary that conditions and facilities need to be provided regarding physical and subjecting factors improving in wards which can be result in stress reduction and satisfaction increasing in the hospital environment, as well. Also, in patients' point of view, using appropriate colors, providing positive entertainment (films and comic books), proper ventilation and fresh air are some of the most important factors in patients ' satisfaction in wards.

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Background: The admission unit is the main entrance of the hospital and the first patient communication with the hospital is through this unit. The waiting time of patients, which is one of the main consequent of this unit, is not only one of the important factors affecting the satisfaction of the patients, but also is one of indicators of the quality of service of the hospital. This study aimed to provide scenarios at reducing patients’ waiting times.
 

Materials and Methods: This research in terms of methods and goals was a descriptive and an applied one, respectively. This study performed on 110 patients who had been admitted to the Mohb-e-Mehr hospital during 70 days and were uniformly trained on all days of the week. Information was also obtained using observation and data recording in prepared forms. The simulation model was designed and implemented with the Arena 14 software.

Results: Based on research findings, the para-clinical unit and the waiting room for hospitalization were two main bottlenecks in the studied system. In order to solve the problem, for each of the above units, a scenario designed and simulated. The implementation of these tests revealed that the proposed scenarios in comparison with the existing conditions had better results in reducing the waiting time and also increasing the number of admitted patients.

 
Conclusion: Improvement of the therapeutic processes will occur through the recognition of the hospital services system and analysis of the bottlenecks and its weakness points. According to the results, an increase in the number of para-clinical unit staff and hospital beds improves the hospital admission function. The implementation of mentioned scenarios reduces waiting time for patients by about 78% and reduces the waiting time for emptying the bed by about 50%.

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Background: Hospitals are considered as the largest and most costly unit of the health system. The present study aims to determine the efficiency of hospitals in Mashhad.
Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive-survey study that was carried out in 2016-2017. The population of the study consisted of patients referring to hospitals in Mashhad. For data collection, records were used in hospitals and the SERVQUAL questionnaire. Data analysis was performed in soft Gams software.
Results: The results of the study indicate that in the SERVQUAL section, three dimensions of empathy response and Warranty were the most important dimensions. Also, 3 characteristics of 26 qualitative features of the service were classified as "attractive". 4 qualitative features are classified as "essential" and 16 features in "single-dimensional". The rankings obtained in the bilingual network method are approximately the same and only in the case of the last four ranks of the final ranking is done by the voting method with equal weights. And it was determined that the hospital number (3) is the lowest and hospital number (5) has the best performance.
Conclusion: By combining the fuzzy SERVQUAL method with network data envelopment analysis, we can eliminate weaknesses in the selection of indicators in different layers of network analysis and calculate the efficiency of such networks. Hospitals need to increase and plan appropriately by designing a hospital that has the highest efficiency and optimal utilization of its resources and cost-effectiveness.
 

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Background: Medical errors represent a serious problem for intensive care and increase the length of stay and mortality. Tracking of medical errors in hospital have focused on voluntary reporting of errors, but 10 to 20 % of errors are ever reported and, of those, 90-95 percent cause no harm to patients. This study was conducted to recognition and analysis medical errors in Intensive Care Unit by GTT in 2019.   
Materials & Methods: This study was a retrospective descriptive-experimental and was conducted in the Intensive Care Unit of a public hospital in Tehran. In 2019 for 13 weeks,127 records were separately reviewed by two nurses by using the IHI checklist and final confirmation was performed by the physician. The data were analyzed by SPSS 22 software.
 Results. 622 triggers, 277 adverse events related to triggers, 121 adverse events without trigger and totally 398 adverse events were identified in ICU. 93 records from 127 records had adverse events. The incidence rate of adverse events was 73/2%, 3/13 adverse events per pa­tient and the incidence rate was 24/8 adverse events per 100 patients-day. The most frequency of events and harms were respectively related to care, intensive care, surgery and medication modules.
Conclusion. According to the result of patient records reviewing and the high rate of AEs that required intervention and also the result of similar study, we can state this tool is more reliable than other methods to detect AEs, such as voluntary reporting of error.
 

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Background: The Family Physician Program, one of the most important efforts of the Iran health system to establish a referral system, was developed and implemented in several provinces, but it faced challenges due to several reasons that prevented the program's progress. So This study was conducted to analyze the family physician program to identify the causes and challenges of the program failure.
Materials & Methods: This retrospective study of policy analysis is a qualitative study with Purposive sampling. Semi-open interviews and document analysis were used for data collection. Data analysis was performed through thematic analysis in the policy triangle framework using MAXQDA software.
Results: According to the study framework, the challenges of the Family Physician Program in the context are conflict of interest, dependency of plans to oneself, instability in management and plans, insufficient attention to culture, resources, and infrastructure. In terms of content include disproportionate executive approach, Lack of localization, selection of inappropriate tools, insufficient transparency, and ambiguity in goals, tasks, and responsibilities; The challenges of the process were examined based on the policy cycle.
Conclusion: The implementation of the family physician program is influenced by cultural, social, political, managerial, and economic factors. As the Ministry of Health officials has re-introduced this crucial program, reviewing the content and methods of program implementation seems necessary.

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Background: Considering the importance and position of the health sector in socio-economic development programs, it is necessary to be aware of the current situation and to recognize its issues and problems. Determining costs and the amount of profit or even loss in the health sector helps in managing costs. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cost of common laboratory services and compare them with the tariffs approved by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education in the selected hospital of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
Materials and Methods: The present study was a cross-sectional and retrospective study. In this study, activity-based costing technique was used. The study population was the laboratory of the selected hospital of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Data collection tools were information forms, software, interviews and direct observation. The analysis was performed using Excel 2016 software and finally, the cost price was compared with the approved tariff.
Results: The findings indicated that the highest and lowest costs were related to the cost of manpower and energy carriers, respectively. The highest cost was related to the urine analysis test and the lowest was related to the sodium and potassium tests.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the cost of conventional laboratory services in the selected hospital of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and the tariffs approved by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education in 2019 were different.

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