ArticleBMC health services research2017
At first glance, informal payments experience on track: why accept or refuse? Patients' perceive in cardiac surgery department of public hospitals, northeast of Iran 2013.
Article in BMC health services research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- New insight into the informal patients' payments on the evidence of literature: a systematic review study.BMC health services research · 2020Pooled it
- Beyond the price tag: a scoping review of the determinants of informal payments in health systems and strategies for curbing them.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- The Iran Healthcare Professionals' Charter of Rights.Archives of Iranian medicine · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic inequality in informal payments for health services among Iranian households: a national pooled study.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Institutional Determinants of Informal Payments for Health Services: An Exploratory Analysis across 117 Countries.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Designing an Informal Payment Model for Patients Admitted in the Iran Health System: A qualitative Study.Ethiopian journal of health sciences · 2021Article
- How Different Motivations for Making Informal Out-Of-Pocket Payments Vary in Their Influence on Users' Satisfaction with Healthcare, Local and National Government, and Satisfaction with Life?BioMed research international · 2021Article
- Trends in Informal Payments by Patients in Europe: A Public Health Policy Approach.Frontiers in public health · 2021Article
- A roadmap for implementing general policies of resistance economy in the Isfahan Universities of Medical Sciences.Journal of education and health promotion · 2020Article
- A critical interpretive synthesis of informal payments in maternal health care.Health policy and planning · 2019Review
- Evaluation of informal payments to health care professionals and the influential factors in Urmia city hospitals, Iran.Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundPatient's Informal payments is among the main source of health care financing in some countries. This paper aimed at determining the patient informal payments and relative factors in Cardiac Surgery Departments (CSD) in hospitals affiliated to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS) in 2013.
methodsIn this cross-sectional study, 316 discharged patients were selected using multi-stage sampling. Data gathering tool was a questionnaire which was filled by structured telephone interviews. We used quantitative content analysis for open-ended questions besides descriptive statistics and nonparametric tests by SPSS 16 at 0.05 Sig level.
resultsSixteen (5.93%) patients made voluntary informal payments. The purpose of payment was: "gratitude" (43.75%), satisfaction with health services provided" (31.25%) and (18.75%) for better quality of services. About 75% of the payments were occurred during receiving health care services. The main causes were "no request for informal payments" (98.14%), "not affording to pay for informal payments" (73.33%) and "paying the hospital expenses by taking out a loan" (55.91%). Responders said they would pay informally in demand situation (51.85%) just for patient's health priority, 40.71% would also "search for other alternative solutions" and 27.33% "accepted the demand as a kind of gratitude culture". Twenty four patients (8.9%) had experienced mandatory informal payments during the last 6 months. The minimum amount of payment was 62.5$ and the maximum was 3125$. There was a significant relationship between the way of referring to medical centers and informal patient's payment (P ≤0.05).
conclusionDespite the widespread prevalent belief about informal payments in public hospitals -particularly to the well-known physicians - such judgment cannot be generalized. The main reasons for the low informal payments in the current study were the personality characteristics of the physicians and hospital staff, their moral conscience and commitment to professional ethics, cultural factors and social-economic status of the patients. Health care system should notify people about their rights specially the payments calculation mechanism and methods. Better communication with the public and especially the media can help to correct attitude toward these payments.
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