Proper Distribution of Specialist Physicians: A Strategy Towards Realizing Justice and Equity in Access to Health Care Services

Article History: Received: 19 Feb 2017 Revised: 11 May 2017 Accepted: 10 June 2017 Background: Paving the way for having equitable access to medical intervention programs is the most important action that a health system can take in realizing social justice. This study aims at examining proper distribution of specialist physicians as an strategy towards realizing justice and equity in access to and use of health services as well as providing recommendations for policy-makers. Methods: This is a review-narrative and bibliographic research that used databases consisting of Magiran, Irandoc, Iranmedex, SID, PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, Direct Science with the key words including Specialists, Health, Equity, Accessibility, Health system and Human resources. The data were collected from 1990 to 2015. Results: There are evidences of regions in the world that still are lacking sufficient number of physician workforce and are not only faced with challenges of recruiting, but also with retention of specialist physicians. In fact, migration of human workforce from deprived regions to more organized and prosperous parts has been a factor influencing workforce shortage in these regions; thereby it adds further problem of recruitment and retention of specialist workforce. Conclusions: Human workforce distribution (Specialist or non-specialists) has direct effects on realizing equity and justice in health system; it also influences economy of a given country indirectly. On the other hand, compensation is one of the important incentives that drives workforce behavior and makes them more inclined towards working in deprived regions. Taking the above mentioned ideas, it is recommended for the health system to use more economic incentives and insure proper distribution that fits individuals' needs. Using various tax policies in deprived, wealthy, and generally different geographical regions is one of the most important incentives available to leverage this purpose.

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