Effective Factors in Hospitalization Costs of the Public Hospitals: A Qualitative Study

Hospitals are the most expensive health care organizations. In this study, identifying factors influencing hospitalization costs based on the three aspects of the health system including patients, health care providers, and insurance organizations were considered.
This was a qualitative and phenomenological study. In this study, 12 experts in the field of management and controlling hospital’s costs were selected through purposive and snowball sampling method. Data were collected using focused group discussion. Framework analysis was used for data analysis.
The factors affecting hospitalization costs were classified into three codes including patients, health care providers, and insurance organizations. Lack of knowledge and awareness and neglecting self-care were the main patient-related factors, and weak management and supervision, lack of medical guidelines, long-term recovery period, lack of implementation of family physician and weak commitments and structural problems of insurance organizations were the main factors related to the health care providers and insurance organizations.
The results showed that by increasing and improving self- care programs, providing health-oriented services, implementation of family physician program, specializing the hospital management, improving the quantity and quality of supervisions and reforming expert structure of insurance organizations, the hospitalization costs can be managed.