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

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 ttest 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