I n 2003, the British Columbia Ministry of Health services contracted with the Centre for Health services and Policy Research at the university of British Columbia to conduct three years of work to establish a population-based information system to describe the primary healthcare (PHC) sector from temporal, geographic, population and provider perspectives. In this special issue of Healthcare Po...

This paper is part of the "Southern cone countries multicentric study of primary healthcare: healthcare models, health system integration and intersectoral relations in urban contexts in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay". Its scope is to contextualize, describe and analyze the current state of the PHC strategy in Argentina and its potential for transforming the fragmented and segmented h...

OBJECTIVE To investigate patients who called the emergency medical services (EMS) for primary healthcare (PHC) problems. DESIGN A retrospective and exploratory patient record study from an EMS perspective, comparing two groups: those who were potential candidates for PHC and those who were not. All data were gathered from EMS and hospital records. SETTINGS The study was completed at the EMS...

Access to basic health services was affirmed as a fundamental human right in the Declaration of Alma-Ata in 1978. The model formally adopted for providing healthcare services was "primary health care" (PHC), which involved universal, community-based preventive and curative services, with substantial community involvement. PHC did not achieve its goals for several reasons, including the refusal ...

Noncommunicable diseases are a major healthcare problem in Nepal and their burden is increasingevery year. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) bring additional challenges to the Nepalese healthcaresystem which is already experiencing infrastructure shortages, poor service delivery, inadequate essential medicines coverage and shortages of healthcare workers. The Nepal government provides a limited n...

BACKGROUND Primary healthcare in developed countries is undergoing important reforms, and these require evaluation strategies to assess how well the population's expectations are being met. Although numerous instruments are available to evaluate primary healthcare (PHC) from the patient perspective, they do not all measure the same range of constructs. To analyze the extent to which important P...

BACKGROUND Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a serious chronic disease and an important public health issue. This study aimed to identify the predominant culture within the Palestinian Primary Healthcare Centers of the Ministry of Health (PHC-MoH) and the Primary Healthcare Centers of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (PHC-UNRWA) by using the competing values framework (...

BACKGROUND Re-engineering of primary healthcare (PHC) was initiated nationally in 2009. There is, however, little information on the role expected of occupational therapists (OTs)in PHC. OBJECTIVES This research aimed to understand how stakeholders of the Department of Health (DOH) perceived the role of OT in PHC service. METHOD This exploratory, qualitative study used purposive sampling to...

OBJECTIVE to assess the cold chain capacity, health workers' immunobiological product conservation knowledge and practices in Primary Healthcare Centers (PHC) in São Paulo city, Brazil. METHODS this descriptive study included 24 randomly selected PHC in the South and Midwest regions of the city; between December 2011 and July 2012, we interviewed the health workers on their vaccine conservati...

BACKGROUND The concept of organizational culture is important in understanding the behaviour of individuals in organizations as they manage external demands and internal social changes. Cyprus healthcare system is under restructuring and soon a new healthcare scheme will be implemented starting at the Primary Healthcare (PHC) level. The aim of the study was to investigate the underlying culture...