Equity must be the basis of primary health care if reform is to deliver the outcomes we all want.

PURPOSE Changes in the Swedish sickness insurance system shifts focus from return-to-work to labour market reintegration. This article analyses Swedish rehabilitation professionals' perspectives on how the changed regulations affect practice, with a special focus on work ability assessments. METHODS Two groups of representatives (n = 15) from organizations involved in rehabilitation and retur...

On March 23, with the strokes of 22 pens, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This sprawling health care reform bill has many unknowns – chief among them, will it really reduce the deficit by $143 billion over 10 years, as the Congressional Budget Office estimated? But here’s what we do know: The bill will expand health insurance to an estimated 32 mi...

Three big risks for hospitals under healthcare reform are: The inevitable deficit reduction initiatives beginning in FFY12. The estimated one-third increase in Medicaid enrollment. The dramatic increase in regulation of private health insurance.

This paper describes the evaluation of a case study of health service reform in southern Adelaide. A mail survey, interviews and focus groups were used to gain an understanding of health care providers' perceptions and experiences of reform. The paper discusses lessons learnt about health service reform and its impact on people working in the health system. It finds that continual change that i...

M ost healthcare institutions have now presented at least one year's audited inancial information using the format and definitions required by the new audit and accounting guide, Audits of Providers of Health Care Services (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants [AICPA], NewYork City, 1990). The guide requires facilities to report charity care and allows them to report community ser...

Program evaluation is generally recognized as a "best practice" activity for worksite health promotion programs. The importance of "best practice" worksite health promotion programming is increasing with the stakes anticipated by health care reform. Volvo's health promotion activities are used as an example of "best practice" programming with a particular focus on creating a dashboard of evalua...

It seemed inconceivable that Vermont would not enact comprehensive health care reform in 1994. Two years earlier the Vermont legislature had created the Vermont Health Care Authority to prepare the groundwork for major reform. Yet the 1994 Vermont General Assembly could not reach agreement on legislation. What went wrong? Some on the political left and right say that the legislature stopped "ba...

Japan is undergoing a set of health care reforms aimed at cutting rising health care costs and increasing the efficiency of health care delivery. This empirical study used a large-scale community survey on 15,302 elderly people 65 years and older (56.0% women) conducted in seven municipalities in 2006, to reveal clear-cut evidence of barriers to necessary care. The reasons for not getting healt...

BACKGROUND More than 9% of Wisconsin residents are without health insurance. Several states have passed legislation to increase access to health care and move toward universal coverage. Wisconsin legislators are also considering health care reform proposals that present alternatives to the current system. OBJECTIVE To describe experiences and concerns of individuals who are uninsured as compa...