Physicians' Attitudes toward Unnecessary Tests and Processes in the Health Care Delivery System; a Cross-Sectional Study

Providing unnecessary services in health systems is common, costly and even harmful. The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of physicians towards the use of unnecessary tests and processes.

The present study was a cross-sectional research. The study population was all physicians working in the health department of Tabriz. Sampling was performed using proportional random sampling method. Data were collected over a period of 6 months. The collected data were entered into SPSS software version 22 and the frequency and percentage of each dimension of the questionnaire were reported.

41% of the participants were female and the mean age of the participants was 43 years. Almost half of the physicians considered the existence of unnecessary services in the Iranian health system as a serious problem (45.8%). However, 33% of physicians state that if a patient requests an unnecessary service, they will prescribe that service with the necessary recommendations. Paying attention to patient safety is one of the most important reasons for not prescribing an unnecessary service (44%). A small percentage of physicians (25%) always talk to patients about unnecessary service costs. Existence of clear and evidence-based clinical guidelines (42.8%) and changing the financing system and rewarding for not using unnecessary tests or processes (36.1%) were cited as influential factors by physicians.

In general, physicianschr('39') attitudes toward non-essential services were moderate. Holding training courses to increase the awareness and attitude of physicians can be effective in raising the attitude.