Infrastructures and Necessary Actions Parallel to Reforms of Medical Service Tariffs to Improve Health System Performance in Iran: A Qualitative Study

Perhaps the most important challenge in provision of health services is the issue of tariffs. The roles of the Ministry of Health, Treatment, and Medical Education, the Supreme Council of public health services insurance, Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Affairs, as well as the Medical Council are specified in law. But it is faced with serious problems in implementation. The purpose of this study was to identify and introduce infrastructures and necessary actions parallel with reforms of medical service tariffs to improve health system performance in Iran.
Purposeful sampling was used and continued until data saturation in this qualitative study. Participants included 12 Health Managers of Tehran, Isfahan, and Tabriz, who were selected based on the study goals. These people were investigated with deep interview. Data analysis was based on a thematic analysis. Criteria such as "credibility", "reliability", "validity", and "stability" of data were considered.
Findings showed that the infrastructure and reforms, according to participant's viewpoints were divided into 3 parts: first, the reform of the Ministry of Health, including structural reforms, reforms related to the provider, and establishment of correct informing; second, health insurance reforms, consisting of structural reforms and actions that should be taken by the government about the insurance; and third, the necessary reforms by the government.
First, it seems that various issues and aspects related to tariff determination should be considered. Furthermore, some preliminaries should be provided before tariff's reformation or some actions should be taken in line with that for the success of tariff reformation process. These measures and reformations are related to the Ministry of Health, insurances, and the government.