BACKGROUND WHO suggest that family physician is the core in the world efforts for quality improvement, cost effectiveness, and equity in the health care systems. This study evaluates the impact of the program on accessibility of the services, case finding, patient referral, feedback process and insurance coverage in the rural health units. METHODS This study was quasi experimental. It compare...

OBJECTIVES To assess the likely effects of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA), based on small firms' experiences under state small group insurance reforms that were similar in design to HIPAA. METHODS Data on 17,818 small businesses (range, 2-50 employees) nationwide from the 1994 National Employer Health Insurance Survey were analyzed to examine the effects o...

BACKGROUND Children of heroin-using women have a higher risk of unfavorable health and developmental outcomes. Although methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) has been widely used to treat heroin-using pregnant women, potential effects on accessibility and utilization of healthcare service for their offspring are less explored. METHODS We used four national registry and health insurance datase...

BACKGROUND The establishment of the National Health Insurance program in Taiwan in 1995 effectively removed the financial barrier to access health care services of Taiwanese people. This population-based cohort study aimed to determine the independent and joint effects of parental education and area urbanization on the mortality risk among children under the universal health insurance coverage ...

BACKGROUND Electronic waste workers are prone to various illnesses and injuries from numerous hazards thus the need for them to seek health care. The aim of this study was to describe health-seeking behavior, and social and other factors affecting this behavior, among electronic waste workers at Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana. METHODS In-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed qualitatively ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the types of access to care most strongly associated with facility-based delivery among women in Ghana. METHODS Data relating to the "5 As of Access" framework were extracted from the 2008 Ghana Demographic Health Survey and analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS In all, 55.5% of a weighted sample of 1102 women delivered in a healthcare facility, whe...

Security, privacy, accessibility, transparency, awareness and perception are the new initiatives in the health care forum promulgated by the HIPAA structural demands, and implemented more recently by the Affordable Care Act. Health care breaches, adverse medical events, hacking into hospital and health care corporation files have become common events. This research study concentrates primarily ...

OBJECTIVE To examine associations between various measures of the food environment and BMI percentile among youth. DESIGN Cross-sectional, observational. SETTING Pitt County, eastern North Carolina. SUBJECTS We extracted the electronic medical records for youth receiving well child check-ups from January 2007 to June 2008. We obtained addresses for food venues from two secondary sources a...

OBJECTIVES To determine if children attend the family physician (FP) or the FP/paediatrician for their surveillance medical appointments, as well as analyse the variables associated with the parents' choice between the two physicians. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Public, semiprivate and private kindergartens in the city of Vila Nova de Famalicão (Portugal). PARTICIPANTS Parents o...

BACKGROUND The umpteenth threats to change of healthcare provider by dissatisfied patients on formal sector health insurance are well known and can be a proxy indicator for the need for quality improvement in service delivery. OBJECTIVE This study was aimed at evaluating patients' satisfaction with quality of care provided at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) clinic of a tertiary ho...