Third phase of Family Physician Program kicks off

TEHRAN – The third phase of the Family Physician Program and referral system kicked off on Tuesday in 19 cities, Alireza Raeisi, an official with the health ministry, has said.

The program aims to make treatment referrals more concentrated and provide more convenient access to health services.

Successful implementation of the Family Physician Program is essential to the health system. There are no other options; the failure to implement the program would inflict the greatest damage on the health system, IRNA quoted Raeisi as saying.

“Over 100 countries worldwide have implemented the program, and an analysis of global experiences indicates that its full implementation is not feasible in the short term; rather, it requires developing a supportive culture, careful planning, patience, perseverance, and continuous follow-up. Nevertheless, based on existing experiences, we assess the program’s implementation process in the country as positive and promising,” Raeisi highlighted.

Referring to the implementation of the program in Fars and Mazandaran provinces, the official said that the unsuccessful experiences in these provinces resulted from improper implementation rather than a failure to fully implement it. Hence, the precise and principled implementation of the current program is of great importance.

The new phase of the program should be implemented in some cities, like Firouzabad, Jahrom, Larestan, Fasa, and Jouybar, in which previous phases of the program were implemented, to ensure its efficiency, he noted.

Drawing upon the experiences of the first and second phases, the implementation of the third phase should be pursued with enhanced speed, precision, and quality. Furthermore, the chancellors of the universities and the heads of the colleges should continuously oversee the selected networks, regularly monitor the implementation process, and collect necessary feedback. They will also need to consider the Social Determinants of Health (SDH), Raeisi further noted.

The rural family physician program started in 2005. Back then, it also targeted villages and cities inhabited by fewer than twenty thousand individuals to make treatment referrals more concentrated and provide more convenient access to health services, ISNA reported.

Periodic examinations and monitoring of people’s health status, easy and round-the-clock access to basic services and primary care, and frequent visits to doctors are the characteristics of a family physician.

Medical, dental, mental, midwifery, nutrition, laboratory, pharmaceutical, and medical imaging are among the services offered by the program.

Based on the Family Physician Program, a physician and a midwife offer services in rural areas; every 3,300 villagers have a physician, and there is a midwife per 5,200 people in villages.

The program will gradually target other parts of the country as well, ISNA quoted Health Minister Mohammad-Reza Zafarqandi as saying.

“It is a large-scale program based on social behavior change. Designing new patient pathways, reforming the referral pattern, and improving the healthcare network system requires careful coordination between the Health Ministry, governors, and other relevant institutions at the provincial level,” IRIB quoted Zafarqandi as saying.

So, it is essential to develop a national headquarters headed by the President to oversee the overall management of the program, he added.

MT/MG