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In May 2014, a new reform in the health sector of Iran was implemented called “health evolution plan.” In the first phase of this reform, the government reduced out-of-pocket payments for service delivery by paying subsidies to the services and after that a revision was done to the medical services values book to improve equity and increase motivation of health professions. One of the affected services in this reform was coronary artery bypass surgery. The purpose of this paper is to show the effects of HEP on costs of coronary artery bypass surgery.

A before-after study was done for this purpose and 167 patients’ total costs and out-of-pocket payments were calculated for the years 2013 (before) and 2014 (after) the reform in three private hospitals of Rasht city, Iran. Econometrics models were estimated after adjustment of confounding variables.

The results of this study showed that surgery costs increased significantly from $1,643.3 to 2,119.5. Nursing and other costs increased significantly from $290.3 to 414.2 and anesthetize costs increased from $619.2 to 947.01. The results of regression model showed that total costs increased $3,008.6 after adjustment of confounders (p-value=0.037). However, no significant changes were found for out-of-pocket payments and out-of-pocket percentage.

The study findings revealed that HTP was not successful enough in financial protection in the private sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility and design of zero-energy buildings (ZEBs) in cold and semi-arid climates. In this study, to maximize the use of renewable energy, energy consumption is diminished using passive solar architecture systems and techniques.

The case study is a residential building with a floor area of 100 m² and four inhabitants in the cold and semi-arid climate, northeast of Iran. For thermal simulation, the climate data such as air temperature, sunshine hours, wind, precipitation and hourly sunlight, are provided from the meteorological station and weather databases of the region. DesignBuilder software is applied for simulation and dynamic analysis of the building, as well as PVsyst software to design and evaluate renewable energy performance.

The simulation results show a 30% decrease in annual energy consumption of the building by complying with the principles of passive design (optimal selection of direction, Trombe wall, shade, proper insulation selection) from 25,443 kWh to 17,767 kWh. Then, the solar energy photovoltaic (PV) system is designed using PVsyst software, taking into account the annual energy requirement and the system’s annual energy yield is estimated to be 26,291 kWh.

The adaptive comparison of the values obtained from the energy analysis indicated that constructing a ZEB is feasible in cold and semi-arid conditions and is considered an effective step to achieve sustainable and environmentally friendly construction.

This paper begins with a challenge to explore the scope and dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Islamic banking and design a CSR disclosure index, which may gauge the level of CSR disclosure in Islamic banking.

It adopts a two-fold approach to develop the CSR disclosure index for Islamic banking, such as “identification” and “prioritization.” In the ambit of identification, it relies on the existing literature related to CSR and Islamic banking. However, it undertakes analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method for prioritization through the sample of 104 experts related to Islamic banking of Pakistan.

It concludes the CSR index for Islamic banking contains five dimensions, including 79 items across 20 sub-dimensions. The results of AHP indicate that the CSR dimensions are important for Shariah governance, employee, community, customer and environment. Moreover, within dimensions, the most important sub-dimensions are Shariah compliance, customer service and quality, green investing/banking, customer relationship, training and development and poverty alleviation.

The CSR disclosure index of this study has important implications for academicians, such as it paves the ways for further investigations and practical usage of index to gauge the level CSR disclosure of Islamic banking. Moreover, it delineates the spectrum of responsibilities for managers of Islamic banking under the domain of CSR.

The proposed CSR disclosure index is comprehensive and stresses on the social responsibility of Islamic banking toward stakeholders. In nutshell, this study offers what is expected from the practitioners of Islamic banking in the domain of social responsibility.