Introduction: Awareness of benefiting from health services and its determinants is important for health care planning. In Andersen’s behavioral model, predisposing and enabling factors and factors related to need explain the use of health services. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors related to the use of inpatient services in Iran based on the mentioned model.
Methods: The present study is a secondary analysis study that was conducted based on the data of the national survey of the use of health services in 2008 and 2015. The number of sampled people was 8326 in 2008 and 5684 in 2015. Logit regression was used to examine the factors related to the use of health services.
Results: Female patients (OR=1.48, P<0.01), older patients (OR=0.01, P<0.05), patients whose needs were diagnosed by doctors or medical personnel (OR=1.98, P<0.01), patients whose head of household had higher than diploma education (OR=1.65, P<0.01), and residents of disadvantaged areas of the country (OR=1.42, P<0.05) were more likely to benefit from inpatient services. The chance of benefiting from inpatient services was higher in 2015 than in 2008 (OR=2.15, P<0.01).
Conclusion: Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services can be a suitable the theoretical framework to explain the determinants of the use of inpatient health services in Iran. It is suggested that the 3 categories of factors constituting this behavioral model should be continuously considered in policies related to the use of inpatient services.
