OBJECTIVE To adapt the consumer version of the Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT) for Vietnam and determine its internal consistency and validity. DESIGN A quantitative cross sectional study. SETTING 56 communes in 3 representative provinces of central Vietnam. PARTICIPANTS Total of 3289 people who used health care services at health facility at least once over the past two years. RESU...

Finding ways to leverage the substantial investment in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to address other maternal, neonatal, and child health threats is a priority. With increased emphasis on health systems strengthening and the integration of disease-specific initiatives within primary care, we propose three areas for consideration: 1) increased integration of service delivery...

BACKGROUND Discrepancies in primary health care (PHC) services between urban and rural settings have already been studied in many countries; however, limited information exists regarding countries, such as Greece, where public Health Centres dedicated to primary care have not been in existence in major cities. The objective of this study was to evaluate points of divergence or convergence betwe...

Is primary care capable of taking a dominant role in running the whole health care system? This challenging question is what makes this book interesting and takes the debate one step ahead in the discussion of solely strengthening primary care, however important. In doing so, it affects the heart of integrated care; how to improve the clinical coherence and coordination that in the end leads to...

Refugee populations have unequal access to primary care and may not receive appropriate health screening or preventive service recommendations. They encounter numerous health care disadvantages as a consequence of low-income status, race and ethnicity, lower educational achievement, varying degrees of health literacy, and limited English proficiency. Refugees may not initially embrace the conce...

People needing intensive and specialized health care are being cared for now in community settings; this has implications for both primary health care professionals and family carers. This paper draws on research investigating how services can be developed to support families caring for children with complex health care needs, to consider the challenges facing professionals working in the prima...

Contractualization consists in the development and implementation of a documented agreement whereby one party (payer) provides compensation to the other party (provider) in exchange for a set of health services to a targeted population. We describe, through a case study, the history and the process of implementation of primary health care contractualization (since 1992) in Portugal, emphasizing...

BACKGROUND Information on health seeking behavior and beneficiaries' perception of the quality of primary care can help policy makers to set strategies to improve health system. With scarcity of research on this particular field in Iraqi Kurdistan region, we sought to explore the patterns of health seeking behavior and perception of the quality of primary care services of a sample of population...

Methods A standardized questionnaire was used and the results were evaluated by an expert panel from the departments involved. To evaluate differences, we compared data from an audit held in 2010. The total number of patients was 933 in March 2010 and 937 in April 2011. The number of readmitted patients within 30 days was 14 in March 2010 and 37 medical and 24 surgical patients in April 2011. W...