Induced Demand in the Iranian Health System: A Review Study

Induced demand is one of the challenges of the health system of countries; it increases the medical costs of people, insurance organizations and ultimately the costs of the healthcare system. This phenomenon is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that identifies its dark dimensions and can lead to control of this process and provide health policy makers with a logical and practical solution to mitigate the resulting challenges.

This study reviewed the literature and scientific texts in the field of management, policy and health economics; and by reviewing articles, reports, upstream documents and resources in domestic and foreign databases and using the keywords induction demand, induction demand provider, assessed the Iranian health system during the past 10 years.

 The results of selected studies were reviewed and then summarized. Examining quantitative studies, it was found that the goal of researchers is often quantitative research to prove the hypothesis of induced demand on the health system or the effect of induced demand on health indicators and variables  in qualitative studies. The researchers sought to find non-transparent aspects of the subject of induced demand, such as the elements of induced demand, the factors that induce induced demand, as well as the challenges and strategies to prevent or reduce the effects of induced demand.

According to the results, most of these studies  examined the factors of induced demand and a small percentage of studies have paid attention to the challenges and strategies to reduce it. Therefore, further studies are needed to examine the challenges and solutions, especially quantitative studies with econometric methods. The extracted strategies can be effective at the macro level to promote efficient management of the health system, reduce challenges between service providers and buyers, as well as control the increase in health system costs and increase the quality of services