Overview of the Performance of Rural Family Physician in Iran

Abstract

The ultimate goal of the health care system of any country is to promote public health. Reforming programs were required because of failure to respond to the needs and expectations of health in recent decades. Rural family physician was a part of these reforms of the health system, which was implemented in 2006. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the rural family physician program since it was started. This review was done by searching in Google, Google scholar, SID, Magiran, Iran-doc with the following keywords: Family physician, rural family physician, family medicine, rural family medicine. 32 related articles were extracted and analyzed. The objectives of family physician program were classified in several sub-goals series including referral system, accountability, access, cost, coverage, priority-based health services, formation of health record, control the quality of services, satisfaction and attitudes of health team staff and service recipients and the family physician performance in achieving this goals. Generally, after a few years of implementation, the program has performed relatively well but the referral system and presenting feedback from specialists, patients follow-up and completing health record was not implemented properly. Access was improved and unnecessary costs were reduced although good holistic health insight has not institutionalized yet. Keywords: Physicians, Family; Health Care Reforms; Iran