Introduction With a high maternal mortality ratio (of 212 per 100000 live births), provision of quality maternal healthcare services has remained a challenge in India. In 2005, government of India launched the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to improve healthcare services and health status of population in rural India with a focus on maternal and child health. In this paper we compared fin...

In the last decade, there has been a rapidly growing emphasis and imperative for healthcare quality improvement. With the vast number of stakeholders involved, it is reaching a pinnacle of activity and requirements. The federal government has been developing and implementing quality initiatives across the healthcare system spectrum. This article looks at three major programs: the Hospital Value...

Chile has achieved great success in terms of growth and development. However, growing inequalities exist in relation to income and health status. The previous Chilean government began to reform the healthcare system with the aim of reducing health inequities. What is meant by "equity" in this context? What is the extent of the equity aimed for? A normative framework is required for public polic...

In order for chiropractic to reach its full potential as a healthcare profession, it must be universally integrated into the mainstream healthcare model. For this to be realized, chiropractic must fi rst be unconditionally embraced by mainstream science. With growing competition for today’s healthcare dollar, health policy makers are increasingly relying on an evidence basis to guide decision m...

committed the federal government to a process of "Administrative Simplification" to reduce healthcare costs, but Congress wanted to limit how far the healthcare industry could externalize attendant privacy risks to patients.4 Yet, in the aftermath, what should have been a substantial victory for patient autonomy and informational privacy has morphed into yet another divisive debate about profes...

Canada's publicly funded healthcare system ensures that medically necessary hospital and physician services are available without financial barriers, but not all community-based care is covered. Consequently, many patients experience financial shocks (FS) related to community-based healthcare services not funded by government, and perhaps also from lost income, a situation that may be difficult...

Background The pursuit of equity in health and healthcare has been the key feature of health policy in India. However, despite the policy significance, the volume of literature available on this issue is scarce. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to examine the horizontal inequities in healthcare utilization, consisting of outpatient and inpatient care in 15 major states and north-eastern regi...

Thailand has now reached a new demographic turning point with the advent of an ageing society [10]. The older population or population aged 60 and above increased from 1.5 million in 1960 to approximately 7.4 million in 2008, and it is expected to be 17.7 million in 2030 [14]. Since the number of elderly people is growing, the number of chronically-ill patients, including those with diabetes, h...