Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with service providers regarding the current healthcare provision and education services for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) and their families in mainland China. 10 service providers described the current policy and identified unmet needs within current practice. Providers perceived that children with ASC were an important bu...

In service economy, scholars and practitioners focus on the development and the appliance of innovative services. The importance of service innovation is rising in many sectors and among different organizations. Several disciplines (e.g. marketing, management, operations research, etc.) focus on this innovation, a concept widely used, but with different definitions. In this paper, service innov...

INTRODUCTION Access to healthcare services is a chronic problem for rural communities throughout the world. The vast geography of Canada has exacerbated the problem for many northern and remote communities that are hundreds of kilometers away from healthcare centers. As a policy response to this problem, in 2006 the Northern Health Authority of the province of British Columbia (BC) initiated 'C...

background: a dramatic increase in healthcare expenditures is a major health policy concern worldwide. understanding factors that underlie the growth in healthcare expenditures is essential to assist decision-makers in finding best policies to manage healthcare costs. we aimed to examine the determinants of healthcare spending in iran over the periods of 1978-2011. methods: a time series analys...

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) and web service technologies have been proposed to respond to some central interoperability challenges of heterogeneous health information systems (HIS). We propose a model, which we are using to define services and solutions for healthcare applications from the requirements in the healthcare processes. Focusing on the transition from the process level of th...

CONTEXT Throughout its history, the main problem for Thailand's health system in has been an inadequate number of physicians and other healthcare workers in rural areas. Due to this, for decades in Thailand, rural service has been mandatory for healthcare workers. ISSUE Thailand's mandatory health service system commenced in 1889 and has been continuous until the present (2010). Under this sy...

The Italian health system is highly decentralized, with most administrative and organizational powers governed by Regions and rather limited powers at national level. The state has full control over the definition of the core benefit package (LEA) but there is evidence that the actual provision of these services varies greatly across Regions.

Healthcare systems in many developing countries do not have enough healthcare providers or healthcare facilities to service their populations. In recent times, nations and groups are setting up health insurance programmes as one way of addressing the myriad of problems that confront healthcare delivery. Develtere et al., discussed the role of mutual health insurance in helping address the situa...

Remote Australia, including areas classified as remote and very remote, accounts for 86% of Australia’s land mass but only 3% of the population. Health care provided to this population is delivered through a number of models and configurations but predominantly provided by remote area nurses. The scope, quantity and diversity of the health care is not well described and for the most part is ane...

Glaucoma is the first leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide with increasing importance in public health. Indicators of glaucoma care quality as well as efficiency would benefit public health assessments, but are lacking. We propose three such indicators. First, the glaucoma coverage rate (GCR), which is the number of people known to have glaucoma divided by the total number of peopl...