Patients' experiences of waiting for treatment have changed dramatically in recent years in the United Kingdom's National Health Service. There has been a substantial reduction in the mean wait but the characteristics of the distributions have also changed significantly, implying a change in priorities and waiting list management. Simulations are often used to assess proposals for investment an...

Currently the demand for transplant organs far outstrips the supply in the UK. This problem is even more severe for the Asian population, who have been shown to be disproportionately over-represented on transplant waiting lists in some regions of the UK. Several commentators have suggested that religious and cultural traditions may be the major determinant preventing Asians from donating organs...

We interviewed persons who had recently been placed on a public waiting list for cataract surgery in Manitoba, Canada; Barcelona, Spain; and Denmark. The majority of the respondents were unwilling to pay higher taxes to reduce the length of the waiting list or to pay more out of pocket to have the surgery performed earlier in the private sector. Less than 2 percent actually had the surgery done...

Giving registered organ donors priority on organ waiting lists, as has been implemented in Israel and Singapore, provides an incentive for registration and has the potential to increase the pool of deceased donor organs. However, the implementation of a priority rule might allow for loopholes — as is the case in Israel — in which an individual can register to receive priority but avoid ever bei...

This paper analyzes the main policy initiatives for improving waiting lists in health care. The authors begin by describing strategies to reduce either waiting time or length of the list. They distinguish between demand-side and supply-side strategies. They proceed to discuss policies for improving the "quality" of waiting time. For each policy, they present both the expected effect and the ind...

BACKGROUND Previous research has described the success of an intervention aimed at improving older adults' ability to regulate their learning. This metacognitive approach involves teaching older adults to allocate their study time more efficiently by testing themselves and restudying items that are less well learned. OBJECTIVE Although this type of memory intervention has shown promise, train...

Australia's major academic health centres not only provide excellent healthcare, but are also involved in one of the most important aspects of the healthcare system -the training of our future health professionals. Most teaching hospitals are also involved in basic and clinical research, and many have major research institutes on their campuses. This symbiosis of healthcare, research and traini...

Waiting lists for inpatient treatment are a widely publicised feature of the National Health Service. They provide ammunition for critics of publically provided medical care, while for advocates of public sector provision they seem, at best, a matter of discomfort and disquiet. An impression has been given that the problem is due to a lack of resources and the solution is an increase in expendi...

Background Different strategies for addressing the challenge of prioritizing elective patients efficiently and fairly have been introduced in Norway. In the time period studied, there were three possible outcomes for elective patients that had been through the process of priority setting: (i) high priority with assigned individual maximum waiting time; (ii) low priority without a maximum waitin...