haniyeh sadat sajadi

Given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine healthcare delivery, access to the drugs they needed was challenging for patients with non-communicable diseases. This study endeavored to identify the problems of these patients in accessing their medicine during the COVID-19 and the proposed solutions from the perspective of stakeholders.

This qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured individual interviews. Participants (=34) were purposefully selected from Tehran's health policymakers, physicians, pharmacists, and patients with chronic diseases. Data were analyzed through the content analysis method.

Data analysis was categorized into six themes and 15 sub-themes. Primary challenges included medical care, providing the required drugs, financial ability, and access to information. Elevating governance in the drug sector and organizing the drug supply chain were identified as strategies.

To improve patients' access to the medicine they need in crises, proper planning to supply the medicine, use the capacity of pharmacies and pharmacists, set up systems related to telemedicine, and faster implementation of prescription and electronic prescription is recommended.

Proper management of Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic requires that hospitals be prepared to face the disease. The aim of this study was to review the existing tools to access the preparedness of hospitals in confrontation with COVID-19 and make their Persian translation available to health policymakers and researchers.

This was a narrative review study. The existing tools were retrieved by online searching with suitable keywords in Google, Google Scholar and PubMed, in addition to hand searching in the websites of the relevant international organizations. Searches were limited to English documents, but no time limitation was considered. After removing duplications, 335 references were entered in Endnote-5. After screening for titles and abstracts, the full texts of the remaining referencing were screened and the required information was extracted. Finally, the structure and content of the found tools were compared and analysed.

In general, three checklists compatible with the purpose of this study were found and their translations were attached to this article.
One was the Checklist developed by the CDC of Europe containing 8 domains, 21 sub-domains and 135 items. The second was developed by the CDC of the US including 3 domains, 8 sub-domains and 80 items and the last one was developed by the WHO containing 11 domains and 104 items.

With regard to the content, there was a high similarity between the checklists. The minor differences on the checklists should be considered in localizing the tools. The next step should be choosing one checklist or making a checklist with combination of the available checklists and then making validation and localization of that checklist to be able to use it in different contexts.

In addition to strengthening the country's economic viability, Health tourism entails providing regional security and has a special place in the financial circulation of countries. The purpose of this study was to analyze the status of the health tourism system in Iran and identify the strategies to improve this industry.
Material and This qualitative research was done in three stages. In the first stage, by reviewing the literature and successful healthcare tourism reforms in successful countries were identified. In the second stage, the status analysis tool was used to analyze the status of health tourism system in Iran. In the third stage, according to the experiences of successful countries, the proposed strategies for improving the health tourism system of Iran were identified.
By analyzing data, strengths were identified such as the existence of specialized medical and specialist centers with low costs and the ability to treat infertility diseases and the most important weakness was identified as the lack of clarity of duties in the health tourism system of the country. The most important opportunities include: fundraising and job creation, enabling economic, social and cultural. The most important threat includes: the lack of awareness of tourists from other countries due to lack of adequate advertising of media and Internet. Based on these, institutional reforms were proposed at the levels of macro policies and strategic reform.
Iran can play a significant role in developing this industry in the region and in the world and earn income from health tourism because of potential capabilities.

The health system reform plan is currently being implemented in Iran due to the emphasis of health ýpolicy makers and planners on the financial protection of patients, equity in access to health services, ýand improvement of the quality of hospital services. This study aimed to investigate the positive ýeffects of health reform plan from the perspective of hospital directorsþ.
This qualitative cross-sectional study was conducted in December, January, and February of 2015. ýSemi-structured interviews were used for data collection. The participants were selected through ýpurposive sampling from among hospital directors and managers in Tehran, Iran. The content of 18 ýinterviews were audio-typed, transcribed, coded, and then, analyzed using NVivo software.
The positive effects of health reform plan implementation were categorized into 8 themes and 21 ýsub-themes. The main themes were insurance coverage of patients in need of healthcare, ýperformance indicators improvement, hospital management system modification, interhospital ýreferral system improvement, improvement of patient payments control and management, ýimprovement of selected quality indicators, increased health system accountability, and increased ýhospital income.
Implementation of the health reform plan in Iran may result in the increasing of patient satisfaction ýand improving of health services quality if sustainable financial resources can be provided for the ýplan.