Health services coverage: Physical access to rehabilitation facilities in Tehran compare with the country

According to the World Health Organization, estimates about 1,800,000 people lived with disability in Tehran. Against there is little evidence of physical access to rehabilitation facilities in Tehran. This study is aimed to assess the physical access to physical rehabilitation facilities in Tehran and compare it with the country.

This is a cross‑sectional study conducted since January to April 2017. We used a master facilities list of rehabilitation facility that developed in Iran to collect the information. The samples of this study included all existing physical rehabilitation centers in Tehran province. Data analysis was done using the SPSSr version 21.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL).

The results showed that rehabilitation facilities existed at different levels, including inpatient (10.51), outpatient (224.28), community based (36.72), and long‑term care (4.96)/1,000,000 populations. Rehabilitation services are provided by rehabilitation professional including: Physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists (8.7), physiotherapists (132.89), occupational therapists (57.4), speech therapists (42.11), and audiologists (48.84) (in 1,000,000 populations).

Tehran needs to increase the physical access to rehabilitation facilities and compared with country was disproportionate physical access to facilities in most cases. It is necessary to establish an interdisciplinary referral system between different rehabilitation providers.