Introduction: Nowadays, cesarean is one of the most common surgeries in the world and also one of the challenges concerning women’s health in developed and developing countries. Providing safe conditions for childbirth is the most important public health obligations. One of the eight packages of the Iranian healthcare reform plan is to promote vaginal delivery.
Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the rate of caesarean two years before and two years after implementing the healthcare reform plan.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic, retrospective, study was conducted in public hospitals affiliated to Qom University of Medical Sciences during 2012-2015. The study population consisted of all births in hospitals and was about 133480. Data were collected by the Department of Health in Qom city, and then were analyzed using the Spearman’s correlation coefficient by the SPSS software version 23.
Results: The results of the hypothesis test based on the Spearman correlation coefficient showed that there was no significant difference in the reduction of the number of cesarean operations before and after the implementation of the healthcare reform plan (r = 142 and P<0.05)
Discussion and Conclusion: Implementation of the healthcare reform has reduced the rate of cesarean in the hospitals. The statistical comparison calculated before and after the implementation of the healthcare reform plan shows that the rate of cesarean in hospital (A) decreased by 8.4%, while in hospital (B) reduced 3.4%. However, the achievement of the goals of the plan to reduce the proportion of cesarean delivery up to 10% per year has not been fully realized.