Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Tariff setting in healthcare is an important control knob affecting the quality, access and cost of services. As part of Iran Health Transformation Plan (HTP) in 2014, the relative value of health care and services was increased to motivate healthcare providers to deliver high quality services. This study aimed to examine the impact of HTP on health services tariffs.
Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study used the data from California Tariff Book (2013 edition) and the new relative value book (2016 edition). The weighted average of the relative value of the anesthetic and surgical services in both books was calculated and compared.
Results: The California book and the new relative value book had 5281 and 3448 service codes respectively in 13 major medical specialties (34.7 percent reduction of service codes in the new tariff book). Overall, 64985.9 K and 125133.6 K were considered in the California book and the new relative value book (92.6% growth). The California book and the new relative value book considered 25,976 K and 22,307 K for anesthesia services, respectively in those 13 medical specialties (14.1% reduction). The HTP has increased the relative value of healthcare services tariff by 1.9 times in average.
Conclusion: The HTP has doubled the tariff of healthcare services. A rise in the relative value of healthcare services has incurred financial burden on Iranian public health insurance companies and made it difficult to finance health system of the country. A sustainable health financing system should be developed as well a change should be applied in provider payment system to control the cost and increase the health system efficiency.

Background: The new version of relative values of diagnostic medical services was published in 2014. It was criticized that the previous edition was suffering from an imbalance between relative values related to various specialties and sub-specialties. The main aim of the new edition of the book was to address this problem by providing more balance relative values related to various specialties and sub-specialties. So far, there have not been studies to analyze to what extent the new addition has been succeeded to reach its main goals. The aim of this study was to provide a cross-specialty analysis of the new edition of Iranian relative values for physicians. To our knowledge, this analysis has been performed for the first time in Iran.
Methods: Having reviewed description for each relative value, each of them has been assigned to one or more corresponding specialty or subspecialty. Only relative values for surgical operations were considered and finally 3238 procedures have been recognized to be included in the analysis. The latest version of Iranian relative values for physician was considered for this analysis. In order to compare the average relative values among various specialties and subspecialties, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey's post-hoc test was used.
Results: Oral and maxillofacial surgery and neurosurgery get the highest (62.81, 60.47 (P<0.001)) and ophthalmology and obstetrics and gynecology get the lowest (28.95, 28.81 (P<0.001)) average relative value. Cardiovascular surgery and plastic surgery get the highest and the lowest (85.25, 50.51 (P<0.001)) average among subspecialties, respectively.
Conclusion: The average relative values are significantly different among specialties and subspecialties. Seeing the difference, itself sounds logical as the job of relative values are to make a difference based on various criteria such as the time and skill needed for each operation, the potential risk for patient and provider it may have, etc. The results of this study provide evidences on how much these differences are. However, if these differences are as there should be needs to be analyzed by further research.

Background: Currently many hospitals around the country face increasing demands of their patients and readmission.The rate of readmission is a useful indicator for determining the performance of healthcare system and it shows the quality of services in the medical institutions. Readmissions have high economic, social and financial impact and studying the related factors seems to be high priority for healthcare systems.
Methods: This qualitative study performed by phenomenological method in three educational hospitals in Kerman from April to September of 2017. Data collection was performed through semi-structured interviews using targeted sampling among all patients who were hospitalized at internal medicine wards, nurses who were working in those wards, and in charge physicians. In total twenty patients, fifteen nurses, and five physicians were selected for interviews. The including criteria were for patients, the history of hospitalization at least once, during one month after the initial hospitalization, and for service providers, familiarity with the subject, work experience in the relevant department of at least three years for nurses and five years for physicians. A seven-step clustering method was used to analyze the data.
Results: The analysis of the interviews led to the identification of three main themes and 11 sub-themes. The main themes included patients' characteristics, manpower and clinical factors, hospital, and environmental factors. Some of the sub-codes included economic and living conditions, marriage status, insurance coverage, patients' beliefs and expectations, the presence or absence of underlying disease, education, lifestyle habits, dietary beliefs of hospitalized patients, lack of trust in medical staff, communication and cultural barriers, ignorance of service providers in treatment, lack of facilities, lack of motivation in medical staff, stressors and finally lack of hospital equipment.

Results: Doing qualitative research and conducting thematic analysis, paraclinical services were classified into three categories: input, process, and outcome. The inputs  category had 5 organizing themes including paraclinical structure, human resource empowerment, cost management, social responsibility and service purchasing. The processes consisted of four themes: organizing the acceptance and delivery of services, monitoring and evaluating implementation, interdisciplinary coordination, applying innovation, and creativity in service delivery. Finally, outputs included three themes: organizing disease prevention and health promotion, gaining a competitive advantage, and reducing health costs. Conclusion: According to the study's findings, to purchase or rationally use paraclinical services, it is necessary to know the dimensions and components that affect them. Managers of the social security organization are urged to lay a greater focus on employee empowerment, the employment of innovative approaches, and interdepartmental collaboration to enhance paraclinical service supply. Additionally, they may better fulfill their social duties and enhance their workers' health services by monitoring and evaluating executive actions.

Background: Nowadays, beauty practices have attracted the attention of people following the change in lifestyle and social values. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of examining the opinion of experts regarding the challenges and management solutions of the aforementioned practices in Iran.
Methods: This qualitative study was conducted through interviews with 26 policymakers and cosmetic surgery service providers in Tehran from April to September 2022. Sampling was purposeful and snowball. The interviews were semi-structured and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data obtained from the interviews. The inclusion criteria for the interviewees' entry were knowledge and experience in the subject and willingness to participate.

Results: Challenges under the four categories of service providers (improper education, non-specialist providers, moral hazards, deficiencies in the way laws are written, and the ineffectiveness of the complaint handling process), service receivers (being influenced by deceptive advertisements, low level of public health literacy and lack of mental health), the place of providing services (performing surgeries in non-standard places and non-integrated information system) and medicines, products and medical equipment (insufficient control over supply, distribution and use and price fluctuations) were categorized. Experts considered the major part of the challenges to be related to the service providers. In the category of service recipients, "being influenced by deceptive advertisements" was the main problem mentioned by the experts. Performing surgeries in non-standard places, including limited surgery centers, non-sterile places, and unauthorized places, is among the unsolved problems regarding the place of providing services. In relation to medicines, products, and medical equipment, the main problem was insufficient supply, distribution, and use supervision. Conclusion: The main effective measure to solve the challenges is to strengthen the supervision of the health system administrator with internal and external coordination and cooperation. In this regard, it is recommended to develop educational, ethical, and legal frameworks, regulate regulatory laws, public awareness, clinical interviews and psychological counseling, especially before cosmetic surgery, and the establishment of an integrated electronic health record system.

Background: The rate of exclusive breastfeeding in Iran at the ages of 3 and 6 months is estimated to be 44% and 27%, respectively, which is still far from the optimal index of the World Health Organization until 2030 (70% in the first six months). In order to monitor breastfeeding counseling centers, which have been set up with the aim of promoting breastfeeding and supporting mothers who have problems with breastfeeding.
Methods: This is a descriptive-retrospective study and all the mothers who were referred to the Health and Treatment Center No. 2 in Mashhad between April 2019 and March 2019 were examined. This health center has two active counseling clinics and the collection of information is based on documents registered in offices and computers. The inclusion criteria for study were not having breast diseases, having an infant child, being able to read and write and living in Mashhad city. The exclusion criteria were also the unwillingness to participate in the study and the newborn suffering from diseases that are incompatible with breastfeeding. Therefore, census sampling was done. The data were analyzed using SPSS 16 software and the significance level was less than 0.05.

Results: In 42.8% of cases, mothers had started feeding combined formula with breast milk before visiting, and in 28.1% of cases, when referring to counseling milk clinics, it was reported that the baby was fed only with formula. After breastfeeding consultations and follow-ups at the end of six months, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding is 34.1% (12% increase compared to the initial reference) and combined formula feeding with breastmilk is 27.8% (a 22% decrease compared to the first visit). And feeding with powdered milk alone was calculated to be 36.5% (an increase of 8.4% compared to the first visit). Conclusion: The positive role of breastfeeding counseling center in reducing the cases of artificial feeding is clear, and it is recommended to prepare written instructions based on the challenges in breastfeeding for breastfeeding counseling in the first month after delivery.