Avoidable hospitalization after family physician and rural health insurance: interrupted time series and regression analyses, Tehran province, Iran

BACKGROUND: Studying the effect of primary health care development when simultaneously implemented with health insurance schemes assesses effectiveness and use of health care services and gives us insight on how to develop such interventions in different countries. AIM: To analyze the impact of health insurance and the family physician program on total hospitalizations, and the relation between avoidable hospitalizations and access to family physicians among the rural population in Iran. METHODS: We conducted an interrupted time series (ITS) analysis of monthly hospitalization rates between the years of 2003 and 2014 to assess the immediate and gradual effects of these reforms on total hospitalization rates in the rural areas of Tehran province. In addition, we used a sample of 22 570 hospitalizations between 2006 and 2013 to develop a logistic regression model to measure the association between access to a family physician and avoidable hospitalizations. FINDINGS: ITS analysis showed that there was an immediate increase of about 1.96 hospitalizations per 1000 inhabitants (P<0.0001, CI=1.58, 2.34) hospitalization rates after the reforms. This was followed by a significant increase of about 0.089 per 1000 inhabitants (P<0.0001, CI=0.07, 0.1). Hospitalization increase continued up to four years after the policy implementation. Following that, hospitalization rates decreased among the rural population (a decrease of 0.066 per 1000, P<0.0001, CI=−0.084, −0.048). Studying the hospitalizations that occurred between 2006 and 2013 showed that there were 4106 avoidable hospitalizations from among a sample of 22 570 hospitalizations. Results of logistic regression models including gender, age and access to family physician variables showed that there was no statistical relation between access to a family physician and avoidable hospitalizations. CONCLUSION: Reforms had access effect and caused increased hospital services uses in people with unmet needs. Also the reforms did not decrease avoidable hospitalizations, and therefore had no efficiency effect.