INNOVATIVE MODELS OF PAYMENT AND CARE DELIVERY are increasingly being used to expand access, improve quality, and reduce medical costs. Although traditional fee-for-service medicine favors doing more than is necessary, newer payment models aim to realign incentives to decrease utilization and increase efficiency. However, little consideration has been given to how fee-for-service reimbursement ...

Poor adherence to medication leads to symptom exacerbation and interferes with the recovery process for patients with schizophrenia. Following baseline assessment, 142 patients in medication maintenance at a community mental health center were randomized to one of 3 treatments for 9 months: (1) PharmCAT, supports including pill containers, signs, alarms, checklists and the organization of belon...

BACKGROUND Admission to hospital can lead to persistent deterioration in physical functioning, particularly for the more vulnerable older population. As a result of this physical deterioration, older people who have been recently discharged from hospital may be particularly high users of health and social support services. Quantify usage and costs of services in older adults after hospitalisati...

Evidence on the impact of user costs on healthcare demand in 'universal' public National Health Services (NHS) is scarce. The changes in copayments and in the regulation of the provision of free patient transportation, introduced in early 2012 in Portugal, provide a natural experiment to evaluate that impact. However, those changes in user costs were accompanied with changes in the criteria tha...

OVERVIEW For time-sensitive, critical-care scenarios requiring transport—such as stroke, high-risk pregnancy, trauma, and pediatric care—reducing the elapsed time between symptom onset and treatment can be of great benefit to the patient while reducing the health care costs to the individual, the hospital, and the public. With mobile telemedicine, valuable prehospital transport time can be used...

Background: In recent years use of family physicians has been determined as a start point of health system reform to achieve more productive health services. In this study we aimed to assess the cost-efficiency of the implementation of this plan in Fars province, southern Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was done in 2007 in 18 provincial health centers as well as 22...

OBJECTIVES Outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) is an effective treatment strategy for a wide variety of infections as long as clinical risk is minimized by conforming to practice guidelines. However, its cost-effectiveness has not been established in the setting of the UK National Health Service. We examined the clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness of an OPAT service based in a ...

BACKGROUND Compassion and collaborative practice are individually associated with high quality healthcare. When combined in a compassionate collaborative care (CCC) practice framework, they are reported to improve health, strengthen care provision, and control health costs. Little is known about how to integrate and measure CCC, yet it is fundamentally applied in palliative and end-of-life care...

Norwegian surgeons provide for a wide range of modern surgical services with excellent results. With a thriving economy and a high standard of living and education, the major disease spectrum relates to cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Almost all types of surgery are performed in Norway. Improvements have been achieved through national programs and population-based registries have served as ...