Background: In recent years, there have been many non-teaching hospitals that have become teaching hospitals. Although the decision to make this change is made at the policy level; But the unknown consequences can create many problems. The present study investigated the experiences of hospitals in changing the function of a non-teaching to a teaching hospital in Iran.
Methods: A Phenomenological qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 40 hospital managers and policy makers who had the experience of changing the function of hospitals in Iran through a purposive sampling in 2021. Thematic analysis using inductive approach and MAXQDA 10 was used for data analysis.
Results: According to the results extracted 16 main categories and 91 subcategories. Considering the complexity and instability of command unity, understanding the change of organizational hierarchy, developing a mechanism to cover client's costs, considering increase management team' legal and social responsibility, coordinating policy demands with Providing resources, funding the teaching mission, organizing the multiple supervisory organizations, transparent communication between hospital and colleges, understanding the complexity of processes, considering change the performance appraisal system and pay for performance were the solutions for decrease problems of changing the function of non-teaching to teaching hospital.
Conclusion: Important matter about the improvement of university hospitals is evaluating the performance of hospitals to maintain their role as progressive actors in hospital network and also as the main actors of teaching future professional human resources. In fact, in the world, hospital becoming teaching is based on the performance of hospitals.
Keywords: Health Systems Agencies; Systems Integration; Teaching hospitals; University hospitals.