OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of increased prescription drug copayments on the therapeutic classes of drugs received and health status of the elderly. HYPOTHESES TESTED: Increased prescription drug copayments will reduce the relative exposure to, annual days use of, and prescription drug costs for drugs used in self-limiting conditions, but will not affect drugs used in progressive chronic con...

Drug therapy accounts for a major portion of health expenditure. A useful strategy for achieving cost efficient healthcare is drug utilisation research as it forms the basis for making amendments in drug policies and helps in rational drug use. The present observational study was conducted to generate data on drug utilization in inpatients of our tertiary care hospital to identify potential tar...

• Objective: To assess the impact of a drug utilization review (DUR) alert letter program on metformin discontinuation rates in patients with a metformin claim and an absolute contraindication to metformin

Linking at-risk callers to ongoing mental health care is a key goal of crisis hotline interventions that has not often been addressed in evaluations of hotlines' effectiveness. We conducted telephone interviews with 376 suicidal and 278 nonsuicidal crisis callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) to assess rates of mental health care utilization following Lifeline calls and...

Background: Studies have shown that people using complementary health insurances have more access to health services than others. In the present study, we aimed at finding the differences between out- of- pocket payments and health service utilizations in complementary health insurances (CHIs) users and nonusers.    Methods:  Propensity score matching was used to compare the 2 g...

BACKGROUND Health utilization inequality is a major concern for health policymakers. Equality in utilization of services is very important for having a healthy society. The aim of this study was to describe inequality in dental care utilization in Iran, Therefore, concentration index, its curve, and the predictors of inequality in utilization of dental services and their spending were calculate...

BACKGROUND Comorbidity has been shown to intensify health care utilization and to increase medical care costs for patients with diabetes. However, most studies have been focused on one health care service, mainly hospital care, or limited their analyses to one additional comorbid disease, or the data were based on self-reported questionnaires instead of health care registration data. The purpos...

OBJECTIVES We sought to find racial differences in the effects of trust in the health care system on preventive health service use among older adults. METHODS We conducted a telephone survey with 1681 Black and White older adults. Survey questions explored respondents' trust in physicians, medical research, and health information sources. We used logistic regression and controlled for covaria...

BACKGROUND Sustaining the availability and rational use of safe and effective drugs is a major problem in developing countries. Irrational drug use affects quality of health care more than accessibility of drugs. OBJECTIVE To assess drug utilization in selected health facilities of South West Shoa Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted in selected healt...

BACKGROUND Community health workers are widely used to provide care for a broad range of health issues. Since 2003 the government of Ethiopia has been deploying specially trained new cadres of community based health workers named health extension workers (HEWs). This initiative has been called the health extension program. Very few studies have investigated the role of these community health wo...