The Auditing of General Practitioner Offices in Tabriz City to Assess Their Compliance with National Licensure Standards

Abstract

Background: The licensure is an evaluation mechanism, which allows health centers or individuals to assess health services delivery based on minimum requirements. Objectives: The present study aimed to audit the general practitioner (GP) offices in Tabriz city to assess their compliance with national licensure standards in 2015. Methods: This was across-sectional study, which audited 228 general practitioner offices randomly. The data from offices was collected based on researcher-made checklist, the validity of which was approved. Firstly, descriptively analysis of data was done and then, the relationship between clinics characteristics and compliance with standards was assessed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s test. To perform the analysis, the SPSS19 software was used, and P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Based on the study results, the mean standards compliance in GP offices was 78.9%, with highest compliance dedicated to medical documents and informatics dimension with 99.1% compliance level and lowest compliance related to hygiene dimension with 56.2% compliance level. In the analysis of the statistical relationship between the offices characteristics and licensure standards, there was significant relationships, between daily admittance of patients in offices and standards compliance in human resources dimension; GPs’ job experience and standards compliance in medical and non-medical devices dimension; and urban district of office and standards compliance in physical environment dimension and medical and non-medical devices dimension. In addition, there was a significant difference between total score of standards compliance and offices of urban districts (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Generally, the status of Tabriz general health clinics was relatively acceptable. Thus, evaluation authorities should pay attention especially to the hygiene dimension.