Effect of the Health Promotion Plan on the Performance of Hospitals: Evidences from East of Iran

Background and Objectives: Hospitals are the largest and most costly operating units of health systems and their share of current public expenditures in the health sector is between 50 to 80 percent. Higher hospital's efficiency will result in better use of the allocated resources in health sector. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of hospitals in South Khorasan using the Pabon Lasso model. Materials and Methods: This is a quasi-experimental and time-series study that investigates the efficacy of South Khorasan hospitals during 2010-2018 (before and after health reform plan). All public hospitals in South Khorasan province were enrolled in the study. Data (bed occupancy rate, bed turnover and patient length of stay) were collected from hospitals in summer 1397 and analyzed using SPSS version 21 software. Results: The average of the Pabon Lasso performance indicators for 8 years was 74.4% bed occupancy rate, 89.9 times the bed turnover and 3.01 days the average of length of stay. The coefficient of occupancy index after the health reform plan was 5.7% higher than before, the bed turnover index increased 4.1 times and the average length of stay increased by 0.08 day. On average, 35% of hospitals were in region 1, 38% in region 2, 21% in region 3 and finally 6% were in 4th region in the Pabon Lasso Diagram. Conclusion: Just 21% of the hospitals were in the region 3 of the Pabon Lasso Diagram- which is the desirable region for effectiveness efficiency of hospitals-. This is not an acceptable statistics for hospitals and requires the intervention of health practitioners and policymakers.