Research objectives Singapore introduced Casemix-based financing for inpatient and day-surgery cases in the public sector in 1999. The application of Casemix has since been extended beyond financing to fields such as benchmarking, clinical quality and utilization review. Casemix data has been invaluable in enabling the tracking and better understanding of quality of care of healthcare providers...

Introduction In the last few years, the use of DRG in the model adopted to finance Portuguese hospitals has been subject to an extensive debate. In order to decide on the best method to achieve the desired efficiency goals, players in the healthcare system have carried out a wide debate to identify whether or not efficiency incentives exist in the adopted model. This discussion, in an effort to...

We studied Brazilian policies on mental health with respect to normative, supply and demand and financing aspects. We concluded that the sustainability of innovations in psychiatric reform depends on enhanced financing and integration with primary care community services, on the overall performance of SUS and the reduction of autonomous and exclusive services in primary care. There is high and ...

Japan's universal and egalitarian health care system helps to keep its population healthy at an exceptionally low cost. Its financing and delivery systems have been adapted over the years in a gradual way that preserves balance. In particular, its mandatory fee schedule has proved to be effective in controlling spending by manipulating prices. Today, with severe fiscal problems, pressures are m...

BACKGROUND In Austria, financing health care -and even more so mental health care- is characterized by a mix of federal and provincial responsibilities, lack of uniformity in service provision and service providers, and diverse funding arrangements. The division between financing structures for health care and social care makes the situation even more complex. This state of affairs results in v...

ermany has a federal political system and 16 states with state-level governments. Like its political system, Ger-many's health care system is strongly influenced by both the federal and state governments. Germany has both private and public provision of health care. On the supply side, doctors and pharmacists are independent, private providers. Most hospitals are not publicly owned, but more th...

s in other industrialized countries, the health care sector is an important element of the Netherlands’ economy. As a share of gross domestic product (GDP), national health expenditures in the Netherlands rose from 6 percent in 1970 to 8.2 percent in 1980 (23). The growth rate slowed in the 1980s; by 1991, national health expenditures accounted for only a slightly higher share of GDP at 8.3 per...

weden is situated in northern Europe. Despite a rather small population (8.7 million in 1992), the country is the fifth largest in area in Europe. Most of the population lives in the southern parts and the coastal areas, leaving many parts sparsely populated. The demographic transition to an aged population is more accentuated in Sweden than other countries. In 1992, 18 percent of all citizens ...

ospitals are a basic element of America's health care system. U.S. hospitals adopt much of the state-of-the-art medical technology, train most new physicians, and are often the point of access to health care for the uninsured. In 1991, hospitals were the single largest category of health spending at 38 percent of national health expenditures (NHE), although other services have increasingly acco...