BACKGROUND Treatment of tuberculosis (TB) in China is partially covered by national programs and health insurance schemes, though TB patients often face considerable medical expenditures. For some, especially those from poorer households, non-medical costs, such as transport, accommodation, and nutritional supplementation may be a substantial additional burden. In this article we aim to evaluat...

BACKGROUND In many countries, the referral-consultation process faces a number of challenges from inefficiencies and rising demand, resulting in excessive wait times for many specialties. We collected referral data from a sample of family doctors across the province of Ontario, Canada as part of a larger program of research. The purpose of this study is to describe referral patterns from primar...

OBJECTIVE To develop a standard taxonomy for inpatient complaints that could be adopted in a wide array of health service institutions. DESIGN A taxonomy was developed by merging the coding schemes from eight prior studies of patient complaints, and then by revising the received coding scheme in light of the codes and clarifications that emerged from a content analysis of patient complaints. ...

The National Health Service (NHS) is facing financial constraints and thus there is considerable interest in ensuring the shortest but optimal hospital stays possible. The aim of this study was to investigate patterns of postoperative length of stay (LOS) stay across the English NHS and to identify factors that significantly influence both optimal and prolonged LOS.Data were obtained from the N...

BACKGROUND Substantial shortcomings in the quality of breast cancer (BC) care have been identified. While breast cancer is responsible for the largest share of cancer care spending, little is known about the value of care provided to US women with BC. METHODS For women aged 65 to 70 years diagnosed July 1997 through December 2005 with stage 0-III BC who were continuously enrolled in fee-for-s...

BACKGROUND Professional development is essential in the health disciplines. Knowing the cost and value of educational approaches informs decisions and choices about learning and teaching practices. OBJECTIVE The primary aim of this study was to conduct a cost analysis of participation in continuing professional development via social media compared with live conference attendance. METHODS C...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in low-resource countries. One contagious patient can infect 10 to 20 contacts in these settings. Delays in diagnosing TB therefore contribute to the spread of the disease and sustain the epidemic. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to assess delays in diagnosing tuberculosis and the factors associated with...

ground-based laser range finder have got more concerned. In our previous research, a method of automated In this paper, a method of fusing ground-based laser registration of two views of laser range image was range image and CCD image for the reconstruction of proposed [4,51, and showed promising results with some textured 3 0 urban object is proposed. An acquisition preliminary experiment. The...

INTRODUCTION While parent-adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) communication is one potential source of SRH information for adolescents, it appears to be inadequately practiced in Ethiopia. This study was designed to investigate the factors that limit or improve parent-adolescent SRH communication in Harar, Eastern Ethiopia. METHODS A community based cross-sectional study was done ...

Rangelands are the main sources of forage for livestock feeding by localpeople. Beside forage production, rangeland ecosystems provide many other goods andservices such as medicinal plants, recreation, soil and water conservation, wildlife habitat,fishing, hunting, hiking, etc. Nevertheless, there are no much information about the waythat local communities think about the rangelands goods and s...