Sociological study of the Empowerment of Insured Persons of Iran Health Insurance Organization: Identifying and Prioritizing Influencing Factors

Despite the importance of the issue of empowerment, insurance organizations in Iran do not seek to empower their insureds due to reasons such as the lack of clarity in the meaning and concept, ignorance of the involved and influential factors, and the lack of scientific and functional status. For this reason, the present study was carried out to identify and prioritize the factors affecting the empowerment of the insured of the Iran Health Insurance Organization.

This study was conducted using a mixed method with a sequential design (first the qualitative Delphi method and then the quantitative survey method) and the participation of 15 health insurance and empowerment specialists in the Delphi method and the participation of 414 insured people of the health insurance organization. In accordance with each of the mentioned methods, sampling and validation methods were also used. Exploratory factor analysis technique was used to discover factors and Friedman’s test was used to compare factors.

After determining 60 important variables and identifying 10 main factors influencing the empowerment of the insured, which are: self-reliance, job satisfaction, feeling of alienation, social health, decision-making power, health education, access to services health and treatment, quality of life relationships, power of foresight and improvement of the level of health-oriented attitude, it was found that “improvement of the level of health-oriented attitude” and “power of foresight” had the greatest and least effect on the empowerment of Iran’s health insurance policyholders, respectively.

The insured people of the Iran Health Insurance Organization believe that in order to empower the insured people, the level of attitude of all levels involved in this field should be improved and “health-oriented approach” should be replaced by “treatment-oriented” in the society.