Equipment’s Layout and Performance in Health Houses: A Correlational Before-After Study

Abstract

Ensuring of specified physicaland organizational terms and conditions in health facilities, has undeniable effect on performance. Equipments layout is one of issuses that Ministry of Health had communicated its Instructions.

A before-after study was conducted in health houses affiliated with Urmia District  Health Center, Iran in 2014 to determine the association between equipments layout and performance inhealth houses. Tewenty health houses subject to the equipment’s layout revision plan were studied. Data about performance and equipment’s layout compliance with standards were collected using valid checklists before revision plan and six months later. Analyses were performed through SPSS statistical software (version 16.0), using paired t-test and regression.

Maximum and minimum  people covered by a health house were 2730 and 366 persons respectively. Most of community health workers had secondary education. There was not full compliance with layout standards in none of health houses. Results indicated that scores had been raisedafter implementation of revision plan both in performance and layout. Paired t-test showed a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of performance before (Mean=15±0.98)  and after (Mean =17.74±0.76) revision  plan  (P<0.001). The effect size of technical equipments on performance statistically were more than office equipments and mean differences were more about technical equipments (1.43±0.65) than office equipments (0.27±0.50).

This exploratory study showed positive and direct effect oflayout of equipments, on performance in health house. Improvement of performance and productivity of first line health facilities needs considering the phisycal factors in organisation.