The Survey of Presenting New Health Services to Middle-aged Population in Health Transformation Plan: a Qualitative Study

Providing health services to middle-aged people is of special importance due to the large population, productivity, and the impact of health behaviors of this age group on various aspects of family health. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the provision of middle-aged health services.

This was a qualitative   study performed in 2017 in   comprehensive health centers of Yazd city. Central part of Iran. Sixty two individuals (specialists, general practitioners and experts) providing health services in comprehensive health centers were selected through targeted sampling . Interviews were done with a semi-structured individualized method. Questions were asked in the following domains: weaknesses and strengths and recommendations about the method of providing services and its content.

According to the results, 15 weak points and 5 strong points in the method of providing services, and 8 strong points and 7 weak points about the content of health service packages and 17 recommended mechanisms about the improvement of the providing services and 11 recommended mechanisms about improvement of the content of packages were extracted. The main weak points in providing services were such as not observing referring system, lack of insurance coverage for some services, problems in Integrated Health Record System. The weak points of the packages of health services for middle-aged people were as lack of predicting the service packages for levels 2 and 3, repetition of the questions in evaluation, and low attention to social health and traditional medicine.

Concentrating on the improvement of the service providing and the contents of the packages of new health services by utilizing presented recommendations according to professional viewpoints of health service providers helps improve health level in this age group and increase the efficiency in the middle-aged people.