INTRODUCTION To fulfil its role of coordinating health care, primary health care needs to be well integrated, internally and with other health and related services. In Australia, primary health care services are divided between public and private sectors, are responsible to different levels of government and work under a variety of funding arrangements, with no overarching policy to provide a c...

This paper analyzes supply and demand side characteristics of (voluntary) Red Cross services in Austria. The demand side analysis is based on a contingent valuation study on people's willingness to pay for emergency treatment, transportation services and disaster relief activities. The supply side is identified by a high percentage of volunteers in the Red Cross organization which makes the pro...

BACKGROUND In October 2012, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began publicly reporting American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) surgical outcomes on its public reporting website, Hospital Compare. Participation in this CMS-NSQIP initiative is voluntary. Our objective was to compare CMS-NSQIP participating hospitals with ACS NSQIP ...

BACKGROUND Smoking is a serious risk to health globally. Health care professionals play a key role in the prevention of smoking as they are considered a role model by patients. OBJECTIVES The aims of this study are to evaluate smoking rate among physicians and dentists from Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq, and to understand their knowledge and attitudes toward tobacco smoking. METHODS A...

This paper provides a description of the nature of hospital sector, with an emphasis on private hospital sector, in Madras city. It highlights some of the characteristics of the hospital sector, namely its size, distribution, range of services offered, manpower employed, and price differentials for outpatient care. A preliminary comparison of 35 private hospitals suggests presence of price-comp...

Objectives The aim of the present study was to provide qualitative insights from urban-based junior doctors (graduation to completion of speciality training) of the effect of rural placements and rotations on career aspirations for work in non-metropolitan practices. Methods A qualitative study was performed of junior doctors based in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. Individual face-to-face or...

1Academic Haematology, Northern Institute of Cancer Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; 2Newcastle Clinical Trials Unit, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; 3Department of Haematology, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; 4Departm...

INTRODUCTION Despite the existence of a large community of nurses, specific mechanisms have not been developed yet to consider their needs and the quality of their work life. Moreover, few studies have been conducted to analyze the nature of nursing, nursing places or nurses' quality of work life. In this regard, the present study aimed to assess predictable productivity of nurses working in Ke...

ECOSEL is a voluntary market framework for private provision of forest ecosystem services. 4 Multi-objective optimization is used in conjunction with a unique funding mechanism to generate and 5 market forest management alternatives that are projected to lead to efficient bundles of ecosystem 6 services on a piece of forestland. ECOSEL allows the public to bid on the competing alternatives. 7 W...

OBJECTIVE With a quasi-experimental design, this study aims to assess whether the Zero-markup Policy for Essential Drugs (ZPED) reduces the medical expense for patients at county hospitals, the major healthcare provider in rural China. METHODS Data from Ningshan county hospital and Zhenping county hospital, China, include 2014 outpatient records and 9239 inpatient records. Quantitative method...