One of the most extensive Chilean health care reforms occurred in July 2005, when the Regime of Explicit Health Guarantees (AUGE) became effective. This reform guarantees coverage for a specific set of health conditions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide timely evidence for policy makers to understand the current distribution and equity of health care utilization in Chile.The author...

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic back pain show an increased use of health-care services leading to high direct costs. Multidisciplinary rehabilitation reduces pain intensity, depression, disability and work inability. The study aims to investigate whether health-care utilization in patients with chronic back pain is lower after rehabilitation than before rehabilitation and if, in addition to s...

BACKGROUND The objective of the review was to evaluate the extent, quality and value of computer simulation modelling in population health and health care delivery. METHODS A narrative systematic review was carried out of world literature from 1980 to 1999, searching Medline, INSPEC, Embase, HealthSTAR, Science Citation Index, CINAHL, MathSci, INFORMS Online and SIGLE databases, and researche...

Transgender people face numerous barriers when utilizing health care in the United States. The current study sought to highlight transgender consumer perspectives in order to present theoretically informed, concrete recommendations for increasing transgender health care utilization. The search yielded several prominent themes associated with barriers to health care for transgender people: 1) pr...

Objective. To study health care utilization in veterans with SpAs. Methods. In a postal survey of 70 508 veterans in Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN)-13 from 1 October 1996 to 31 March 1998, demographics, smoking status and performance of activities of daily living (ADLs) were queried. Databases provided ICD-9 codes for AS, PsA and ReA; comorbidities; demographics; and health care uti...

BACKGROUND Despite economic growth and improved health outcomes over the past few decades, China still experiences striking urban-rural health inequalities. Urban and rural residents distinguished by the hukou system may experience profound disparities because of institutional effect. The aim of this study is to estimate trends in urban-rural disparities in self-care, outpatient care, and inpat...

This study examines access to, utilization of, and quality of health care for Latino children with autism and other developmental disabilities. We analyze data from the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (N  =  4,414 children with autism and other developmental disabilities). Compared with White children, Latino children with autism and other developmental disabilities h...

Traditional measurement models of health care utilization are not able to represent the complex structure of health care utilization. In this qualitative study, we, therefore, developed a new model to represent the health care utilization structure. In Norway and Germany, we conducted episodic interviews, participant observation and a concurrent context analysis. Data was analyzed by thematic c...

OBJECTIVE Postnatal care is an important issue in maintaining and promoting maternal and neonatal health. However, utilization of postpartum maternal health care services is at a low rate in many countries. This study was aimed to investigate the impact of integrated obstetric and neonatal services on utilization rates of postnatal health care service among mothers. METHODS This study was per...