Assessment of Access to Health Care in Family Physician Program with a Comprehensive Health Care Approach

This study aimed to assess the outcomes of family physician program, whose goal was to increase access to health care, using comprehensive health care approach in 17 rural health centers in the Gorgan province, Iran, during 2012-13.
This was an applied and descriptive-analytic study. The assessment took place in a 24-month period, using error-correction regression models within panel-data regression model that were computed with Ewies8 software. The estimation results were shown by weighted average coefficients of health care in comprehensive care, and effectiveness coefficients for short- and long-term effects of comprehensive care indicators of access to health care.
There was a positive relation between the access to health care and comprehensive care index. In addition, a 10-percentage increase in comprehensive care index (the weighted mean of four cares: medical care, nursing care, laboratory care and pharmaceutical care), the average access to health care would increase by 10.42 percent.
Family physician program have succeeded in increasing access to health care by a growth rate equal to the growth rate of comprehensive health care. However, the effect of comprehensive health care on access to care is highly dependent on physicians and only, slightly influenced by other factors similar to the earlier program of developing health care network.