Performance Evaluation of Provincial Units of Social Security Organization in Indirect Treatment Sector Using TOPSIS Method in 2017

Social Security Organization as a health service provider provides some parts of healthcare services in indirect sector through contracting with private and public centers. The purpose of this paper was to performance assessment and ranking provincial units of this organization in indirect treatment sector. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, the performance of this organization's indirect treatment across the country was assessed using the TOPSIS method by considering six important attributes. For this purpose, each province was considered as an alternative also the required data from the 2017 statistical yearbook was obtained. Calculations and ranking of provinces were done using Excel 2010 software. The ratio of the total number of contracted healthcare centers to the population covered by the treatment of each province and proportion of the total number of doctors contracted to the population covered by the treatment of each province attributes with the highest weight were identified. The highest and lowest performance scores were calculated 1 and 6×10-4 respectively. Although the social security organization has used indirect treatment in all provinces of the country as a strategy to increase the access of insured persons to medical resources, it did not have the same performance in all provinces. Therefore, it is recommended to increase the purchase contracts of health services with hospitals, clinics, polyclinics, day clinics, healthcare centers, general practitioners, specialists and dentists of public sector, private, military, etc., especially in provinces with poor performance.