INTRODUCTION The objective of this study was to identify the key enablers of change in re-orienting a remote acute care model to comprehensive primary healthcare delivery. The setting of the study was a 12-bed hospital in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia. METHODS Individual key informant, in-depth interviews were completed with five of six identified senior leaders involved in the developm...

BACKGROUND In the Netherlands in 2006, a health insurance system reform took place in which regulated competition between insurers and providers is key. In this context, the government placed greater emphasis on patients being able to choose health insurers and providers as a precondition for competition. Patient choice became an instrument instead of solely a goal in itself. In the current stu...

INTRODUCTION The provision of healthcare services in developing countries has received increasing attention, but inequalities persist. One nation with potential inequalities in healthcare services is Equatorial Guinea (Central-West Africa). Mitigating these inequalities is difficult, as the Equatoguinean healthcare system remains relatively understudied. METHODS In this study, we interviewed ...

The Irish healthcare system has long been criticised for a number of perceived weaknesses, including access to healthcare based on ability-to-pay rather than need. Consequently, in 2011, a newly elected government committed to the development of a universal, single-tier system based on need and financed through Universal Health Insurance (UHI). This article draws on the national and internation...

Punjab is the largest province of Pakistan with a population of over 85 million. Provision of equal access to primary healthcare is a mammoth task in this developing country with well known resource constraints. Punjab has a network of 2748 primary healthcare (PHC) facilities spread over an area of 205,345 km2. The Punjab government has initiated a two-year Health Sector Reforms Programme (HSRP...

OBJECTIVE : The purpose of this study was to examine how nursing is viewed by the nation's decision makers and opinion leaders. BACKGROUND : Nurses comprise the largest subgroup of the health and healthcare workforce. The public recognizes nurses' contributions, consistently ranking them highest in honesty and ethics. Yet, significant barriers remain in nurses achieving substantial leadership...

The year is 2009, and America is once again grappling with ‘‘healthcare reform.’’ Health costs are climbing at an unsustainable rate, already consuming 17% of the nation’s gross domestic product, nearly twice that of other industrialized nations. An estimated 46 million US citizens are without any healthcare insurance at all, and another 25 million do not have sufficient insurance to adequately...

This review article provides information about the origins, history, evolution and current status of the Saudi healthcare system, which is currently being transformed from a publicly financed and managed welfare system to a market-oriented, employment-based, insurance-driven system. Since its inception in the 1920s, the system has provided free healthcare to all Saudi nationals at publicly owne...

South Africa is an upper-middle-income country with widespread social and geographical inequality of surgical provision. The National Forum on Surgery and Anaesthesia in South Africa brought together various stakeholders, including government, societies, academic clinicians and the biomedical industry, to define the core strategy for a national surgical plan. During the forum, presentations and...

Background In the attempt to move towards universal health coverage (UHC), many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are actively seeking to contract-out non-state providers (NSPs) to deliver health services to a specified population. Research on contracting-out has focused more on the impact of contracting-out than on the actual processes underlying the intervention and contextual factors ...