Exploring Influential Factors on Unnecessary Medical Interventions: The Viewpoints of Iranian Health System Experts

Making medical interventions over the actual needs of patients, not only waste existing resources and cause more costs but also threaten people’s health. Identifying, removing and preventing factors affecting unnecessary medical interventions have a main role in its controlling. So, this study aimed to explore factors affecting this phenomenon from the viewpoints of Iranian health system experts.

To collect data, Focus Group Discussions, semi-structured face to face interviews were conducted. The participants were selected through purposeful sampling. Related documents were also collected. Content analysis (inductive-deductive) was used for data analysis.

Four themes and 16 subthemes were extracted. Making evidence informed policy interventions in payment system, insurance system, tariff system and education system in the country, management of conflict interests, making culture and informing community are the factors that are influential on controlling and decreasing side effects of this phenomenon.

effort to identifying factors influential on unnecessary medical interventions can help establishing accurate supervision and reporting system and cause preventive interventions to reduce more unnecessary costs and inappropriate outcomes resulted from this phenomenon.