Abstract
Background and objectives : Since a major part of the budget for the health system is devoted to hospitals, continuous and constant supervision and evaluation of hospitals using performance indicators is a necessary undertaking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between changes in the grade rating of hospitals and performance indicators of the university hospitals in Kermanshah.
Material and Methods : This research was a descriptive-analytic study with all those university hospitals in Kermanshah as its statistical community whose grade ratings have changed during the past ten years. Due to the limited volume of this community, the statistical method was used. The documents related to performance indicators and certificates of grade rating of the hospitals were the tools used for collecting information. Finally, for determining the relationship between research variables, Pearson regression coefficient and SPSS version 21 were used.
Results : Our findings in this research showed that in general, there were no statistically significant relationships between any of the performance indicators and the grade ratings, except for a significantly negative relationship between the indicator of the rate of hospital bed occupancy and grade ratings. There were negative relationships between grade ratings and the average length of stay of patients in hospitals, their mortality rate and their turnover rate of hospital beds while there was a positive relationship between grade ratings and the bed turnover interval.
Conclusion : Results of our research show that the evaluation system was inefficient in the past and that rating hospitals is not a sufficient criterion of desirability of services offered by hospitals. It is felt that a new system together with a financing system is needed to investigate the efficiency and the qualitative and quantitative performance of hospitals.