Given the problematic nature of attempts to reform national delivery systems for health care, the paper reviews the context and logic of reforms in the health sector. After a background on approaches to building capacity within three generations of public sector reforms, it examines the reforms applied to financing, organizing and delivering health services and suggests strategies for reform th...

All countries, no matter what their stage of industrial development, need to make tough choices on how to use their scarce resources. The competition for resources is not only between different sectors of the economy, but within each sector as well. Should more resources be devoted to education or to health care? Within the health care sector: should more resources be devoted to primary care or...

OBJECTIVE To analyze the utilization of hospital services for cancer care by location, sex, age group and care institution in Mexico from 2004-2013. MATERIALS AND METHODS Time series study from 2004-2013, based on administrative records of hospital discharges for cancer in the health sector, including the private sector. RESULTS The utilization rate increased significantly from 290 to 360 p...

Lean thinking is a method for organising complex production processes so as to encourage flow and reduce waste. While the principles of lean thinking were developed in the manufacturing sector, there is increasing interest in its application in health care. This case history documents the introduction and development of Redesigning Care, a lean thinking-based program to redesign care processes ...

BACKGROUND The concept of knowledge management has been prevalent in the business sector for decades. Only recently has knowledge management been receiving attention by the health care sector, in part due to the ever growing amount of information that health care practitioners must handle. It has become essential to develop a way to manage the information coming in to and going out of a health ...

The contribution made by the private sector to health care in a low- or middle-income country may affect levels of physician emigration from that country. The increasing importance of the private sector in health care in the developing world has resulted in newfound academic interest in that sector's influences on many aspects of national health systems. The growth in physician emigration from ...

private healthcare services in vietnam are seen as a major part of the solution to the rapid increase in need and demand for healthcare services. formally recognized over 20 years ago, the private health services coexist with public services and are available all over the country. however, the scale and size of private sector is still small compared to the public sector and public acceptance an...