Effects of the New Health Reform Plan on the Performance Indicators of Hamedan University Hospitals

A New Health Reform Plan consisting of seven programs was initiated in Iran in mid-May 2015 aiming to reduce the out-of-pocket payments, improve the public’s health, and promote the public health indicators. This study was conducted to determine the effect of the Plan on the performance indicators of Hamedan university hospitals.
In this longitudinal descriptive-analytical study, based on the interrupted time series design, data related to hospital performance indicators were collected from all (15) Hamedan University hospitals for a period of 15 months (7 months before, and 7 months after, the implementation of the Plan, with a one-month interval in between). The SPSS software was used for data analysis.
The data indicated changes in all the performance indicators after the implementation of the Plan. The largest changes were in the number of emergency and selective surgeries and the smallest in the ratio of active to total beds. Further analysis of the data showed that, as compared to the same months in the previous year, only a small number of these changes (number of emergency surgical operations and the ratio of active to total beds) were statistically significant.
Based on the findings it can be concluded that changes have occurred in all the selected indicators as a result of implementation of the New Reform Plan, indicating that the Plan has affected favorably performance of the hospitals. However, the effects observed should be judged cautiously, considering the possible negative consequences such as induced demand and hospital workload increase in the long run.