National Family Physician Program in Shahroud: Assessing Quality of Implementation and Condition of Settings

One of the most important duties of a family physician is to provide primary health care. This is completely considered in the family physician program for a target population. This study aimed to assess quality of implementation of the national family physician program in Shahroud in 2010.

In this cross-sectional study, all health care centers (n=19) in where the family physician program was implemented were studied. A checklist and a 164-item questionnaire were filled out for each center. The data were analyzed using SPSS 16.

Most of the physicians were female (60.7%). More than half (53.6%) were married. The duration of employment as a family physician was 22.05±18.91 months. In 84.2% of the centers, a board of trustees was formed. About half of the physicians (47.4%), had fully registered the referred patients’ characteristics and the results of the follow-ups in the recording system. No significant relationships were observed between the quality of the data registration with age, gender, marital status, and duration of working as family physician and general practitioner. There was a significant relationship between the welfare facilities of heath care centers and the distance of the centers from city.

Many components of the family physician program such as supplies, office, medical equipments, patient referral and follow-up, filling out health files of the target population, forming boards of trustees, providing reference feedbacks from level two, and issuing death certificates were lower than the expected level. Thus, revising and improving the family physician program will greatly help to a better implementation of the program.