Outsourcing in Health Facilities: Challenges in Medical University of Isfahan in Focus

Nasrin Shaarbafchizadeh; Pejman Aghdak; Morteza Sahebi

doi:10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_196_20

Outsourcing in Health Facilities: Challenges in Medical University of Isfahan in Focus

Int J Prev Med. 2020 Oct 5:11:172. doi: 10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_196_20. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Nasrin Shaarbafchizadeh¹, Pejman Aghdak², Morteza Sahebi³

Affiliations

¹ Health Management and Economics Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
² Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
³ Social Determinants of Health Research Center, School of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: Outsourcing is one of the major strategies for keeping competitive gain in today's highly varying markets, especially in health systems. This study endeavored to identify operational challenges of outsourcing health facilities affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in the academic year 2019.

Methods: This qualitative study was conducted with content analysis approach. To conduct the interview, key informants were from the managers of health facilities and decision makers of health deputy and managers from private sector were selected through purposive sampling. The saturation point was reached at 12 semi-structured interviewees; this way, data were collected through interviews with experts. A thematic analysis was employed to analyze the transcriptions by MAX QDA10.

Results: According to the results of thematic analysis, seven major themes identified as operational challenges of outsourcing health services in health facilities with 40 sub-themes.

Conclusions: Outsourcing health services in health facilities needs to be done more scientifically and logically. Decision makers must predict the challenges and apply solutions before outsourcing, supervise, and evaluate the impacts of outsourcing after at least 1 year.

Keywords: Challenges; health facilities; health services; outsourced services; qualitative research.