The second stage consultation of healthcare reform in Hong Kong was launched in late 2010. One of the key features in the healthcare reform is the use of packaged charging based on Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG) structure, for reimbursement of medical fees in order to enhance cost certainty and transparency in private healthcare services. The objective of the study was to investigate the comment...

The provision of health services in Australia currently is primarily financed by a unique interaction of public and private insurers. This commentary looks at a loophole in this framework, namely that private insurers have to date been able to avoid funding healthcare for some of their policy holders, as it is not a requirement to use private insurance when treatment occurs in Australian public...

regarding the fiscal constraints and management difficulties of public hospitals, several countries have usedpublic private partnership model to improve their health facilities. public private partnership enables using public resources and private investment and expertise in a combined structure. moheb hospital is the first iranian hospital managed according to public private-partnership. the p...

Introduction Healthcare systems in the early 1970s, the so called 'golden age' of the welfare state, came much closer to what we characterize as distinct ideal types: the Private Insurance System, the Social Insurance System and the National Health Service (NHS). During the past decades, as a consequence of problem pressure caused, for example, by globalization and demographic change, healthcar...

Calvary Health Care, Hobart, is in the exclusive position of being one of the few private hospitals that provide clinical placements to medical students in Australia. This offers a unique opportunity to investigate workplace learning opportunities for medical students within the private health care setting. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the unique and valuable educational experiences t...

BACKGROUND Field surveys conducted in China before the implementation of the essential medicine policy showed that Chinese individuals faced less access to essential medicines. This paper aims to evaluate the availability, prices and affordability of essential medicines in Jiangsu Province, China after the implementation of the policy in 2009. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was conducted in...

OBJECTIVE Healthcare providers and other employees, especially those who do not work in a hospital, may not easily find help after the occurrence of a blood exposure accident. In 2006, a national call center was established in The Netherlands to fill this gap. METHODS All occupational blood exposure accidents reported to the 24-hours-per-day, 7-days-per-week call center from 2007, 2008, and 2...

Canada has been able to develop a fairly successful system of healthcare rationing by balancing the conflicting concerns of equal access and cost efficiency, federal funding and provincial control, and public sector management and private sector provision. Financial constraints limit the kinds of services included within the notion of equal access, however, forcing healthcare providers to make ...

Cost-containment in healthcare spending has become a central issue in public policy and healthcare reform, especially as the affordable care act adds millions of people to public and private insurance rolls. In this climate, longstanding criticism of pharmaceutical pricing has grown sharper, and many in both policy and medicine have characterized the costs of newly developed drugs as both exorb...