Background: Tariff setting in healthcare is an important control knob affecting the quality, access and cost of services. As part of Iran Health Transformation Plan (HTP) in 2014, the relative value of health care and services was increased to motivate healthcare providers to deliver high quality services. This study aimed to examine the impact of HTP on health services tariffs. Methods: This ...

THE UNITED STATES IS A NATION IN WHICH 47 MILlion citizens have no health insurance, more than 16% of the country’s gross domestic product is spent on rapidly increasing health costs, and stark disparities exist in health care access, exemplified by 20% of the population currently residing in federally designated health professional shortage areas. These formidable challenges have led to renewe...

Background Comzmercialization of health care has contributed to widen inequities between the rich and the poor, especially in settings with suboptimal regulatory frameworks of the health sector. Poorly regulated fee-for-service payment systems generate inequity and initiate a vicious circle in which access to quality health care gradually deteriorates. Although the abolition of user fees is hig...

It has been well recognized internationally that hospitals are not as safe as they should be. In order to redress this situation, health care services around the world have turned their attention to strategically implementing robust patient safety and quality care programmes to identify circumstances that put patients at risk of harm and then acting to prevent or control those risks. Despite th...

Over the last four decades there has been an increasing emphasis on quality in health care. According to a series of recent US reports, however, there is no longer just a gap between what this quality is and what it could be, but a widening chasm (1). Crossing that chasm will be no simple task. It requires us to confront competing values that are at the heart of the major debates in public heal...

background & aim: qualitative perspectives on reproductive health (rh) facilities, adolescent friendly health services (afhs) still remain unexplored among indian adolescents. the aim of our study was to explore the perceptions and awareness about reproductive health and its facilities among adolescents in two districts in india. methods: a qualitative study design using fgd was adopted. strati...

background: in some primary health care settings, even where the health services are not available, provisions are not made to ensure continuity of care. this study aimed to determine the availability and level of continuity of care for maternal health services in the primary health centers (phcs) in nnewi, nigeria. methods: this was a cross‑sectional survey. using multistage sampling technique...

BACKGROUND This article considers how health services access and equity documents represent the problem of access to health services and what the effects of that representation might be for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. We conducted a critical discourse analysis on selected access and equity documents using a gender-based diversity framework as determined by two obj...