Assessing Readiness ‌of Khorramabad University Hospitals to Respond to COVID--19 Epidemic based‌ on WHO-EMRO Checklist

Background: The spread and epidemic of COVID-19, as a new disease, challenged many health achievements. In hospitals, as the center of crisis management activities, it is very important to develop a crisis preparedness plan. In this study, the response-readiness of Khorram Abad hospitals in the crisis of COVID-19 was discussed. Materials and Methods: This study is a descriptive and applied research that was conducted cross-sectionally in the summer of 1400 in two stages. In the first stage, the condition of 3 Khorram Abad University Hospitals was based on a checklist WHO-EMRO evaluation of the hospital's response readiness to deal with the covid disease was done. The data were analyzed after being recorded in Excel. Based on the obtained results, the weak points of each hospital were extracted and examined through the management panel and individual interviews, and finally implementation solutions were presented. Results: Hospital "A" is relatively prepared in terms of human resources, rapid identification and infection control; Hospital "B" was relatively prepared in the fields of continuity of services, rapid identification, isolation and management of patients; Hospital "C" was also relatively prepared in the fields of information, human resources, rapid identification and infection control; They were fully prepared in other areas. Two hospitals "B and C" are at the level of full readiness and hospital "A" is at the border of full readiness and the overall level of readiness with 81% was estimated at the optimal level. Conclusion: Considering the optimal preparation of Khorram Abad hospitals in dealing with the crisis of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is necessary to train and allocate sufficient manpower to face future crises, and allocate budget to the program. Crisis preparedness, standard supply chain design and evaluation of crisis management programs should be given more attention

Evaluation of an Urban Phase of the Specialized Care Program for Diabetes in Iran: Providers′ Perspectives

Background: To develop and implement more effective programs of health care delivery to prevent and control diabetes, Iran has developed and implemented the urban phase of the specialized care program for diabetic′s patients. Deeply understanding the views and experiences of various stakeholders in this program can assist policy makers to identify the program′s strengths and weaknesses and enable them to develop action plans. Hence, the present study aimed to evaluate the planning and establishing of this program from the perspective of providers. Methods: A qualitative study was applied using documents review and face-to-face semi-structured interviews with the program leads and relevant executive managers of the local medical universities. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: Three main themes and nine subthemes were explored, including program planning (the content and the strengths, weaknesses, and corrective measures), implementation (executive mechanisms at the university level, establishment of referral system, collaboration between deputies of health and treatment, information dissemination mechanisms, satisfaction measurement and strengths, weaknesses and corrective measures), and result (implementation results). Conclusions: The urban phase of the specialized care program for diabetic′s patients has been a good base to improve continuity of care, which emphasizes on controlling and prevention of occurrence or progression of chronic complications of diabetes. This model can also be used for better management of other chronic disease. However, there are still issues that should be considered and improved such as allocation of guaranteed resources, more trained health professionals, and more evidence based guidelines and protocols, better collaboration among medical universities′ deputies, clearer payment system for program evaluation and better information management system