BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to describe the magnitude of educational inequalities in utilisation of general practitioner (GP) and specialist services in 9 European countries. In addition to West European countries, we have included 3 Eastern European countries: Hungary, Estonia and Latvia. To cover the gap in knowledge we pay a special attention to the magnitude of inequalities among pa...

BACKGROUND Primary healthcare is established to ensure that people have access to health services through facilities located in their community. However, utilisation of health facilities in Nigeria remains low in many communities. AIM To assess the utilisation of community-based health facility (CBHF) amongst adults in Ibadan, Nigeria. SETTINGS A low-income community in Ibadan North West Lo...

BACKGROUND In urban Australia, patients with serious and continuing illnesses make frequent use of hospital emergency department (ED) services. However, the risk factors for hospital utilisation among the broad population of people with chronic illness are not well known. The aim of this study was to assess the predictors of hospital utilisation (either inpatient admissions or ED visits) in a c...

Campuses of educational institutions periodically need to increase network bandwidth to keep up with increased demand and this decision is based on the quantitative aspects of the network bandwidth utilisation. The qualitative utilisation of the bandwidth is seldom looked into. Improving the qualitative utilisation of the bandwidth may not even necessitate a network upgrade. Although blacklist-...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine the impact of a comprehensive periodic health examination programme on health care utilisation and costs in a working population. DESIGN A cohort method was used to observe the trends in health care utilisation and costs for a group of local government employees from 1 February 1986 until 31 January 1992, during which time (in 1988) a comprehensive periodic health e...

Objectives: We compared need for and utilisation of health services among young, healthy smokers who did not want to quit (“the non-motivated”), and “motivated smokers”, relative to never-smokers. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 9,915 Hong Kong Police officers. We assessed smoking status, differentiating non-motivated from motivated smokers. Need was measured as number of respirato...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to investigate groups of patients with a relatively homogenous health status to evaluate the degree to which use of the Australian hospital system is affected by socio-economic status, locational accessibility to services and patient payment classification. METHOD Records of all deaths occurring in Western Australia from 1997 to 2000 inclusive were extracted from t...

BACKGROUND Rehabilitation and other forms of subacute care play an important role in the Australian health care system, yet there is ambiguity around clinical definitions of subacute care, how it differs from acute care, where it is best done and what resources are required. This leads to inconsistent and often poorly defined patient selection criteria as well as a lack of research into efficie...