Choices need to be made between competing uses of health care resources. There is debate about how these choices should be made, who should make them and the criteria upon which they should be made. Evaluation of health care is an important part of this debate. It has been suggested that the contribution of health economics to the evaluation of health promotion is limited, both because the meth...

BACKGROUND The accountable care organization (ACO) is a new organizational form to manage patients across the continuum of care. There are numerous questions about how ACOs should be optimally structured, including compensation arrangements with primary care physicians. METHODS Using data from a national survey of physician practices, we compared primary care physicians' compensation between ...

OBJECTIVES To identify and describe constraints facing the development and dissemination of technologies appropriate for public health care challenges and solutions in the developing world. METHODS Review of lessons learned in development and introduction of numerous health technologies as experienced by a non-profit organization working on technologies for 25 years. RESULTS Many obstacles ...

Across the world there is tremendous variation in the way health care is provided and funded and most importantly in healthcare outcomes. Yet concern about the financing of health care has become a matter of great concern in every economy. In developed countries, rapid growth in medical innovations and technology and the cost of caring for an aging population have combined to make soaring healt...

This article identifies the impact of managed-care reforms on the utilization of medical services within the military health-services system. The data come from a recent demonstration project that substituted an HMO and PPO for traditional FFS arrangements. Results from a semiparametric model indicate that the generosity of benefits in the HMO increased demand for ambulatory services. Unlike...

It is time hospice and palliative care grew up. We can no longer expect governments to treat them as a charity case, with just enough funding to avert adverse newspaper headlines. Increased financial pressure from the global economic recession and fiscal crisis on already stretched budgets means tough decisions have to be made about where to invest limited health funds. Consequently, we need to...