Descriptive Study of Economic Behavior of General Practitioners in Iran: Practice Income, Hours of Work, and Patient Visits

BACKGROUND: Although there is a critical need for information on economic performance of Iranian general practitioners (GPs) in health policymaking, there is not any scientific evidence in this area. Therefore, in the present report, the characteristics of economic behaviors of Iranian GPs were described. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study in 2015, in which the data were collected from 666 GPs. The variables including monthly gross income, hours of work, and patient visits were studied as the measures of economic behavior of GPs. Descriptive statistics, t-test, and Analysis of Variance were used for analyzing the data. The statistical analysis was performed by STATA12. RESULTS: The annual income of the GPs understudy was 26,000 US dollar (USD) (82,680 purchasing power parity [PPP]). The ratio of this value to gross domestic product per capita and minimum wage of Iran in 2015 was 4.8 and 9.2, respectively. On average, every GP in Iran has an income of 2188.1 USD (6958.16 PPP), works 142 h, and visits an average of 494 patients/month. The results showed that the economic behavior of Iranian GPs has a significant difference in terms of gender, age, marital status, practice experience, practice location, type of practice, being a family physicians, and working in different settings (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The Iranian GPs understudy work less than their counterparts in other (compared) countries. The studied GPs had a higher income (adjusted by hours of work and countries' per capita income) than their counterparts in other (studied) countries. Moreover, there are inequalities between GPs in terms of income, the volume of services provided and the work hours.