Comparing Franchise Elimination of Medical Services in Hospitals in Contract with Social Security Organization in Provinces with Costs of dispatching Patients to Tehran.

In the absence of medical facilities in Social Security Organization (SSO) hospitals in provinces, the patients will be dispatched to Tehran. This will dissatisfaction and intellectual and emotional tensions and imposes a lot of costs upon SSO for dispatching the patients. The objective of this study is to compare franchise elimination of medical services in hospitals in contract with social security organization in Provinces with costs of patients dispatching to Tehran. The study was done as retrospective and analytical research. The neurosurgical patients dispatched to Tehran were selected for the study (using the census method). The data were collected in information forms. Research finding were analyzed by SPSS software. Among studied provinces, Khuzestan province, with 233 cases, had the highest frequency ofpatients dispatched and Zanjan and Golestan provinces with 2 cases had the lowest frequency. There was a significant difference between average of dispatching costs paid by SSO and the average franchise paid by patients (p<0.001) such that patients dispatching cost was higher than the franchise paid by patients. There was also no significant difference between average dispatching costs and franchise margin among studied provinces. Considering the fact that cost of studied dispatching patients was higher than the franchise paid by them in exchange of medical services from hospitals in contract with SSO, elimination of medical services` franchise and treatment of patients in their provinces could decrease in the SSO costs compared with dispatching them to Tehran.