This article summarizes an extensive review of South American experiences with primary health care since the Declaration of Alma-Ata. It aims to address the following specific questions: What are the enabling and constraining historical and structural conditions for primary health care policies and practices? How has health care reform supported or undermined primary health care? What evidence ...

In many (predominantly) publicly financed health care systems market-oriented health care reforms are being implemented or have been proposed. The purpose of these reforms is to make resource allocation in health care more efficient, more innovative and more responsive to consumers preferences while maintaining equity. At the same time, the advances in technology result in a divergence of consu...

The health systems of former Soviet Union countries are undergoing reform away from the highly centralised, resource-intensive, specialised and hierarchical Soviet system, towards a more generalist, efficient health service with greater focus on primary health care. Family Health Nursing is a new model designed by WHO Europe in which skilled generalist community nurses deliver primary health ca...

BACKGROUND Greece is hit hard by the state debt crisis. This calls for comprehensive reforms to restore sustainable and balanced growth. Healthcare is one of the public sectors needing reform. The European Union (EU) Task Force for Greece asked the authors to assess the situation of primary care and to make recommendations for reform. Primary healthcare is especially relevant in that it might i...

Recent health care reform is one of the biggest changes that the health care industry has ever faced. This reform represents paradigm changing opportunities and challenges for the company providing health insurance in a managed care environment. The CIO of a premier managed care health insurance provider (ABC Company) wants to take advantage of the new environment using Information Technology. ...

s health reform expands the Medicaid population by 16-20 million individuals over the next decade, efforts to strengthen the primary care delivery system are increasingly critical, particularly for lowincome populations. Small primary care practices, which serve high volumes of Medicaid beneficiaries and racially and ethnically diverse populations, often lack infrastructure and staff needed to ...

Although the goals for research based in secondary care in Norway are ambitious – and are accompanied by strong financial incentives following a hospital reform in 2002 – primary care research has not been given the same resources or attention. In 2001, we implemented a registered list system for GPs, which boosted enthusiasm and recruitment to primary care – at least initially [1]. Since then,...