Prompted in part by constrained national budgets, European governments are increasingly partnering with the private sector to underwrite the costs of constructing and operating public hospitals and other health care facilities and delivering services. Through such publicprivate partnerships, governments hope to avoid up-front capital expenditure and to harness private-sector efficiencies, while...

Infrastructure challenges continue to drive considerable public policy debate. The nation’s economy relies very heavily on the combined provision of three critical infrastructures: energy, banking and finance, and information technology (IT). These three critical infrastructures are interconnected, interdependent and cross-cutting essential services to the whole economy. Indeed, the “incapacity...

Developing effective protection, mitigation and recovery measures for critical infrastructures is paramount in the wake of increasing natural and human-initiated hazards, risks and threats. Influencing these measures are interconnections (i.e., interdependencies) among infrastructure systems. Understanding the nature of system interdependencies can play an essential role in minimizing and/or re...

Background A variety of forces are leading many hospitals to seek opportunities to join integrated health care systems. Declining reimbursement from government programs and increasing cost sensitivity of employers, along with declining demand for inpatient hospital services, are contributing factors. Accommodating the more fundamental change from fee-for-service reimbursement toward “accountabl...

BACKGROUND International health partnerships are one approach to capacity building in health systems. The evidence base for institutional partnerships for health service development remains weak and evaluation of the process and outcomes of health partnerships is a priority. The variability of partnerships contributes to the challenge of understanding their effectiveness and a typology of partn...

vii

................................................................................................................... vii Samenvatting........................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements................................................................................................ xi 1 General Introduction...................

application of ict in health (ehealth) has become an integral part of modern healthcare systems. elec­tronic health information management has proven useful in improving quality of health care, reducing costs and facilitating health research. however, the increasing complexity of healthcare and the growing demand for high quality healthcare delivery has created a need for ehealth systems with t...

the accountability for reasonableness (afr) concept has been developed and discussed for over two decades. its interpretation has been studied in several ways partly guided by the specific settings and the researchers involved. this has again influenced the development of the concept, but not led to universal application. the potential use in health technology assessments (htas) has recently be...

hospital information system (his) should ideally allow different forms of data to be stored and used for decision making by clinicians and managers alike. this system has been developed since the early 1980's, and many hospitals gradually converted from an unrelated system into an integrated one. in successful implementation of his plans, the role of human factors, either individually or as a g...