BACKGROUND Shenzhen's rapid growth and urbanisation has attracted a large, mobile, migrant working population. This article explores health protection through the means of social health insurance between migrants and registrants and their point of access to healthcare. METHODS A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in Shenzhen, with a random sample of 793 registered and 750 non-...

The difficult current economic climate is riddled with change and uncertainty, and the hospital industry is not immune to the effects. In fact hospitals face an unprecedented series of challenges, including poor economic conditions, increasing competition, and greater reporting requirements. On top of these issues, the healthcare reform law looms, with a great deal of perplexity regarding its u...

News media effects on their audiences are complex. Four commonly cited effects are: informing audiences; agenda-setting; framing; and persuading. The release in autumn 2002 of two reports on options for reforming Canada's healthcare system attracted widespread media attention. We explored the potential for each of the four media effects by examining Canadian newspaper representation of this hea...

There is increasing support for the proposition that academic health centers have a duty to accept broad responsibility for the health of their communities. The Health of the Public program has proposed that centers become directly involved in the social-political process as advocates for reform of the health care system. Such engagement raises important issues about the roles and responsibilit...

710 n engl j med 361;7 nejm.org august 13, 2009 set up to encourage interaction and debate. We urge readers to visit the Forum section of the Center and share their ideas for the future of American health care. It is our hope that the entire body of work in the online Health Care Reform Center will inform the political process. Although the debate over how to repair and reinvigorate our health ...

In large systems, such as health care, reforms are underway constantly. The article presents a definition of health care reform and factors that influence its success. The factors being discussed range from knowledgeable personnel, the role of involvement of international experts and all stakeholders in the country, the importance of electoral mandate and governmental support, leadership and cl...

The future of health care in Croatia Most of the time, I criticize the moves of the health administration or write about the scandals in the field, but rarely I discuss possible solutions for the catastrophic situation in the health care system. If at a conference or in a TV program I am asked about it, to save the time I stick to the political reality and claim that I see no solutions since, w...

The term medical necessity has been mainly a placeholder in insurance plans for over thirty years. More recently, the national health care reform debate and litigation over denials of costly experimental treatments have broken the term out into open discussion about what a necessary service is and who should decide if it is covered. This paper summarizes the history of the term and its evolutio...

Japan and Canada have basically similar health care systems of publicly funded and privately delivered, although the funding and delivery mechanisms in detail are slightly different. Both countries have experienced the common health care problems of rapid growth in health care costs, changes in disease structure from acute to chronic diseases, increasing demands for better-quality health care a...