Recent history of the health care system The Swedish health care system began in 1882 when the county councils were established. In 1928, they became responsible for providing hospital care and in the 1930s they were gradually given responsibility for various non-hospital health care services. The first important step towards universal coverage for physician consultations, prescription drugs, a...

Mobile health (mHealth) is an emerging field devoted to the use of mobile and wireless devices to affect health outcomes, health care services, and health research. Despite great promise, little research has examined its effectiveness. It is the authors' view that the full potential of mHealth has yet to be realized in research and practice. This Perspective article explores when and for whom m...

Governments have been thrust to the forefront of health care reform efforts as growth in government health care costs was faster than growth in all other sponsor sectors in 1991. In the business sector, real health care costs per worker have risen 65 times faster than real wages and salaries per worker during the past 26 years. Households continue to devote 5 percent of income after taxes to he...

Knowledge management in health care sector poses a challenge for policy makers and international health organizations. Nowadays, virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) resolve many problems, which arise from geographical distance and expensive learning process in health care sector. It is used by health professionals and researchers, for improving health care services quality, by enhancing the...

Aim. Describe the mechanisms currently being used by federal and provincial/territorial governments, medical associations, and private insurers to control the cost of health care in our country. Methods. Descriptive method used. Statistics on percentage GDP spent on health, and health status of the population, were compared with other OECD countries. Questions discussed: importance of cost cont...

results the findings of this study showed that in most selected countries, primary care services were provided by the private sector and the public sector has been mostly functioning as a supervisor in this area, but in iran, primary care services were provided by the government. the findings of this study also showed that hospital services in iran and selected countries (second and third level...

This paper demonstrates the existence, in a particular subset of the Turkish public health care sector, of equilibria moving towards a low-quality trap over time. The dynamics of the movement in question hinges, in part, on the socially necessary but demographically asymmetric burden, on some public health care institutions, of providing affordable health care to certain sections of the populat...

The U.S. health care sector is highly interconnected with industrial activities that emit much of the nation's pollution to air, water, and soils. We estimate emissions directly and indirectly attributable to the health care sector, and potential harmful effects on public health. Negative environmental and public health outcomes were estimated through economic input-output life cycle assessment...

This paper examines health care reform in urban and rural China. Before health care reform, Chinese health service facilities were run entirely by the state and basically they performed a social welfare function. This health care system greatly improved the population health conditions but many problems started to emerge in 1980s when the economic reform started. Since then, the government has ...