Opinions of Health System Experts about Main Causes of Induced Demand: a Qualitative Study

Induced demand is resulted from various factors influencing physicians and patients'' behaviors. It is also affected by rules and regulations of markets and organizations of medical services. This study aimed to investigate main factors that affect the induced demand using experts'' opinions at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. This was a qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were used for data generation. 17 Known experts who had valuable experiences in the issue were invited to participate in the study using purposive sampling. Data were gathered until data saturation was obtained. Reliability of the information and stability were confirmed. The anonymity of the interviewees was preserved. The data were transcribed، categorized and used for thematic analysis. In this study، three themes and 77 sub-themes were extracted. The three main themes included infrastructural factors، social factors، and organizational-structural factors. These three main themes had 77 subthemes. The results of the present study have presented a framework for analyzing the major causes of induced demand. The causes identified here included complexity of medicine، information asymmetry between service providers and consumers، clinical uncertainty، false beliefs، advertisements، insufficient supervision، scarcity of clinical guidelines، weakness of education system، and ignorance of medical ethics. These findings help policymakers to investigate the induced demand phenomenon clear-sightedly. It is suggested that in order to control induced demand، people’s awareness be increased and financial motivations of health service providers be controlled through proper policies، and clinical guidelines be used as a strong tool to monitor doctors’ performance.