Overall drug overuse, including psychotropic, is the Croatian reality. Therefore, in between 2000 and 2012, the interventions to control drug overspending were undertaken. The main aims of the study are: to determine the morbidity trends of mental disorders registered in family medicine (FM), the trends in psychotropic drug utilization and to identify whether the trends of utilization have any ...

One of the most extensive Chilean health care reforms occurred in July 2005, when the Regime of Explicit Health Guarantees (AUGE) became effective. This reform guarantees coverage for a specific set of health conditions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide timely evidence for policy makers to understand the current distribution and equity of health care utilization in Chile.The author...

PURPOSE To examine health care utilization of people with multiple chronic diseases in The Netherlands compared to people with a single chronic disease, and to identify subgroups of multimorbid patients according to health care utilization. METHODS All patients diagnosed with one or more chronic diseases in 2008-2009 (N=54,051) were selected from the nationwide NIVEL Primary Care Database, an...

A new public health insurance scheme has been gradually introduced in rural provinces in China since 2003. This would likely cause an increment in the use of health services. It is known that the association between health insurance coverage and health service utilization varies among different age groups. This study aims to examine the association between extending health insurance coverage an...

BACKGROUND Multiple factors influence a child's ability to access oral health care. The aim of this study was to identify factors that facilitated and served as barriers to children's utilization of oral health care services in Enugu, Nigeria. METHODS The study recruited 1406 primary school pupils aged 8 to 11 years. All the children received oral health education, with the aid of an oral hea...

BACKGROUND Utilization of specialty care may not be a discrete, isolated behavior but rather, a behavior of sequential movements within the health care system. Although patients may often visit their primary care physician and receive a referral before utilizing specialty care, prior studies have underestimated the importance of accounting for these sequential movements. METHODS The sample in...

BACKGROUND In Ethiopia, children and mothers have been facing several health problems due to poor access to modern health care facilities and lack of effective demand to utilize the available ones. In response to this, the Ethiopian government initiated the health extension program in 2003 to improve equity in access to preventive, promotive and selected curative health interventions through he...

OBJECTIVE In China, despite a high coverage rate, health insurance is not used for all illness episodes. Our goal is to identify subjects' characteristics associated with insurance utilization and the association between utilization and medical expenditure. METHODS A survey was conducted in January and February of 2012. 2093 middle-aged and elderly subjects (45 years old and above) were surve...

background: awareness of occupational hazards and its safety precautions among welders is an important health issue, especially in developing countries. objective: to assess the awareness of occupational hazards and utilization of safety measures among welders in coastal south india. methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted among 209 welders in puducherry, south india. baseline characteri...

BACKGROUND Thematic maps allow a more rapid and immediate reading of the geographical differences in the distribution of data referred to a specific territory. The aim of this study was to show, for the first time, the application of some statistical and cartographic tools in the analysis of drug utilization in the pediatric population of an Italian region, and to assess the intra-regional diff...