Background: Gaining health is an inalienable right of every human being; therefore, governments are required to provide a minimum of health care services for all people who live in the society. Objectives: This study was conducted to compare the health care system of Iran and some selected countries around the world. Methods: This was a descriptive-comparative study, which was conducted to compare the health care system of Iran and a number of selected countries with a focus on the service provider and payment method. In this research, nine countries including Norway, Australia, United States of America, Germany, Italy, Canada, England, Denmark and Japan were selected and studied based on the availability of data. These data were compared to that of Iran. The required information from selected countries was collected in 2014 using the "health system review: health system in transition", and "international profiles of health care systems", as well as well-known websites such as the world health organization, the world bank and the health department. Results: The findings of this study showed that in most selected countries, primary care services were provided by the private sector and the public sector has been mostly functioning as a supervisor in this area, but in Iran, primary care services were provided by the government. The findings of this study also showed that hospital services in Iran and selected countries (second and third level services) were provided by both public and private sectors, yet the public sector had a bigger share. Moreover, payment in primary health care (PHC) in the majority of the selected countries was mostly capitation and FFS payments, or a combination of the two. Payment in hospital care (secondary and tertiary levels) in most of the studied countries and even Iran was mostly through governmental budgets. Conclusions: According to the findings of this comparative study indicating the successful experiences of health systems around the world, it seems that the implementation of the process of decentralization of the government in some sections and different levels of health care is the best option for the health care system of Iran.

Context: In many healthcare systems, the quality of the healthcare delivered is monitored using a number of "indicators." In the present review, we investigate studies that address issues with the care delivered by healthcare providers. To do this, we employ indicators of the quality of those healthcare services. Evidence Acquisition:The studies for the review were identified by searching a number of electronic databases, including Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, Ovid (Medline), the Social Sciences Citation Index, SID (Scientific Information Database, or Persian database), and Iran Medex (Persian database). Of 8,850 studies published between January 1971 and May 2015, 53 met the study criteria and were reviewed. In this study, the following key words were searched, both alone and in combination: health, healthcare, health care, provider*, effectiveness, quality, clinical outcome, patient satisfaction, and quality of life. We also considered healthcare quality indicators such as "clinical outcome," "patient satisfaction," and "quality of life" for our assessment of the quality of healthcare providers.Results: Of the 53 papers selected, 18 assessed the quality of care provided for cardiovascular disorders, 12 studied cancer conditions, eight dealt with metabolic disorders and diabetes, six focused on acute infection, three assessed orthopedics and trauma conditions, two studied pediatric conditions, two assessed obstetrics and gynecology conditions, one dealt with asthma and allergic disease conditions, and one assessed geriatric conditions. In our assessment of improvements in healthcare providers' performance based on healthcare quality indicators, improvements in clinical outcomes ranged from 26.6% for cancer conditions to 98.8% for pediatric and gynecological conditions. An acceptable level of patient satisfaction was achieved in the range of 30.2% for cancer conditions to 96.0% for pediatric conditions, while improvements to quality of life ranged from 12.5% for cancer conditions to 88.7% for acute infection.Conclusions: Taking account of three indicators for assessing the quality of healthcare providers (clinical outcome, patient satisfaction, and quality of life), the highest improvement levels among providers were observed for pediatric and gynecological conditions, and the lowest improvement levels were found for cancer conditions.