Background
The present study has been undertaken with the aim to evaluate performance and ranking of various universities of medical sciences that are responsible for providing public health services and primary health care in Iran.
Methods
Four models; Weighted Factor Analysis (WFA), Equal Weighting (EW), Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) have been applied for evaluating the performance of universities of medical sciences. This study was commenced based on the statistical reports of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) census data from the Statistical Center of Iran, indicators of Vital Statistics, results of Multiple Indicator of Demographic and Health Survey 2010, and results of the National Survey of Risk Factors of non-communicable diseases.
Results
The average performance scores in WFA, EW, SFA, and DEA methods for the universities are 0.611, 0.663, 0.736 and 0.838, respectively. Based on the ranking of Gilan University, with an average score of 4.75, and Rafsanjan University, with an average score of 0.41, these universities have obtained the first and the last rank in the performance of their primary health care and public health systems, respectively. According to the results of all four models, the Universities of Gilan, Ardebil, and Bojnourd were the strongest ranking in this regard and the Universities of Rafsanjan, Kerman, Ahvaz, and Jiroft ranked weakest in performance.
Conclusions
The average performance of the universities of medical sciences is not acceptable at the present level in which they stand in Iran. Of course, this condition is not prevalent in all universities and there is much dispersion in the performance of universities at the country level today. Designing the evaluation system and annual ranking of universities of medical sciences by using the methodology of the present study can lead to the improvement of performance of this system and, consequently, the improvement of heath indicators, by attracting the society and attention of policymakers to the domain of primary and public health care and creating a healthy competition among different regions of the country.