OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper was to profile staffing levels for allied health (AH) professional and support staff in Queensland Health inpatient general rehabilitation services (at a given point-in-time) and compare them against established profession-specific standards and guidelines in order to provide a reference for future workforce planning for these services. METHODS A statewide ...

We investigate the impact of Certificate of Need (CON) Law and its stringency on Inpatient service utilization measured by hospital occupancy. We show that on average the CON legislation reduces utilization in Inpatient units. Besides, we do not find sufficient statistical evidence to reject the exogenous assumption of CON and its features. Furthermore, we confirm the qualitative nature of thes...

OBJECTIVES Few studies have estimated the effect of diabetes integrated care at a population level. We have assessed the impact of introducing a community service-led diabetes integrated care programme on commissioner payments (tariff) for inpatient care in rural England. METHODS The Diabetes Integrated Care Initiative was delivered by a separate enhanced community diabetes service, increasin...

BACKGROUND Health systems increasingly try to make their services more responsive to users' expectations. In the context of the World Health Report 2000, WHO developed the concept of health system responsiveness as a performance parameter. Responsiveness relates to the system's ability to respond to service users' legitimate expectations of non-medical aspects. We used this concept in an effort...

OBJECTIVE Few studies have examined the course of coexisting dementia and depression. The purpose of this study was to compare elderly patients who had coexisting dementia and depression with elderly patients who had either disorder alone in terms of their utilization of inpatient and outpatient services. METHOD The study group included 7,115 veterans aged 60 years or older who had been disch...

Background. Socioeconomic factors and insurance status have not been correlated with differential use of healthcare services in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Aim. To describe IBD-related expenditures based on insurance and household income with the use of inpatient, outpatient, emergency, and office-based services, and prescribed medications in the United States (US). Methods. We evaluated ...

Medicaid agencies use both second surgical opinion programs (SSOP's) and inpatient hospital preadmission review programs to control utilization of services and thus program expenditures. This article reports on the 13 mandatory and 7 voluntary SSOP's and the 21 inpatient preadmission review programs, based on responses from 44 State Medicaid agencies.

INTRODUCTION The Chinese New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) was launched in 2003 aiming at protecting the poor in rural areas from high health expenditures and improving access to health services. The income related inequality of the reform is a debating and concerning policy issue in China. The purpose of this study is to analyze the degree and changes of income related inequalities in both...

BACKGROUND Several community mental health centres and mental hospitals in Norway now allow users with a diagnosis of severe mental illness to self-refer for admission. This give a group of service users who are well-known to service providers the opportunity to refer themselves for short inpatient stays without contacting their doctor, a duty doctor or emergency department. Evidence on self-re...