BACKGROUND Informal payments for health care, which are common in many countries, can have negative effects on health care access, equity and health status as they lead people to forgo or delay seeking care, or to sell assets to pay for care. Many countries are putting reforms in place with the aim of reducing informal payments. In order to be successful, such policies should be informed by the...

informal payments to health care providers have been reported in many african, asian and european countries. this study aimed to investigate different aspects of these payments that are also known as under-the-table payments in iran.this is an in-depth interview-based qualitative study conducted on 12 purposively chosen clinical specialists. the interviewees answered 9 questions including the o...

BACKGROUND Frail older people often receive fragmented care from multiple providers. According to the literature, there is an urgent need for coordination of care. Online and eHealth tools are increasingly used to improve coordination. However, there are significant barriers to their implementation in frail older people. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to (1) evaluate differences in use of a personal o...

provision of services by public sector providers overseen directly by National TB Programs (NTP). However, a majority of people first seek care in the non-NTP sector, even among the very poor [1], and one key reason for the missing millions is the patients who are managed in the informal and private sectors, but either not diagnosed, or not notified to NTPs. The private and informal sector rang...

BACKGROUND The study was conducted to explore challenges faced by trained informal health providers referring individuals with suspected mental disorders for treatment, and potential opportunities to counter these challenges. METHODS The study used a qualitative focus group approach. It involved community health workers, traditional and faith healers from Makueni County in Kenya. Ten Focus Gr...

INTRODUCTION Many studies examining the phenomena of medical tourism have identified health equity issues associated with this global health services practice. However, there is a notable lack of attention in this existing research to the informal care provided by the friends and family members who typically accompany medical tourists abroad. To date, researchers have not examined the care role...

under the table or informal payments in several middle and low income countries is a serious impediment to health care reform. these payments are effectively a form of systemic corruption. this report shows the efforts of a patient who seek health care for his ankle while being requested to pay under the table in hospital and private clinic. the data were collected by interview and surveying pa...

SETTING Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), Delhi, India. OBJECTIVE To ascertain the number and sequence of providers visited by TB patients before availing treatment services from DOTS; to describe the duration between onset of symptoms to treatment. STUDY DESIGN A cross sectional, qualitative study. Information was gathered through in-depth interviews of TB patients r...

Informal health providers ranging from drug vendors to traditional healers account for a large fraction of health care provision in developing countries. They are, however, largely unlicensed and unregulated leading to concern that they provide ineffective and, in some cases, even harmful care. A new and controversial policy tool that has been proposed to alter household health seeking behavior...