data envelopment analysis (dea) measures the relative efficiency of a homogenous set of decision-making units (dmus) when multiple inputs and outputs are present. the deabased malmquist productivity index measuring the productivity change of dmus over time has proven itself to be a valid tool to compare group performance. however, in the previous models developed for this purpose, it was suppos...

the paper published in the january 2015 issue of this journal by gusmano and colleagues entitled “shanghai rising: health improvements as measured by avoidable mortality since 2000” has spurred this commentary. we discuss controversial issues surrounding the concept of avoidable mortality in health service research in general and gusmano’s study in particular. the impact of overall social devel...

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Leonid Andreev for programming the survey on the internet; Jim and Vivienne Duppenthaler for handling the WHO server and dissemination; for helpful comments. We are grateful to Pierre Lewalle and Eduardo Sabaté for translating the questionnaire into French and Spanish.

The cycle of performance measurement and management begins with explicitly establishing goals which are reflected in the adoption of specific performance indicators, followed by analysis and actions aimed at producing change to improve performance in a variety of dimensions such as equity, access, effectiveness, efficiency and social responsiveness. The application of performance indicators may...

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS The re-negotiation of the 10-year 2004 First Ministers' Accord provides an opportunity to review medicare's fundamentals. We used the published results from 13 Commonwealth Fund international health surveys to assess Canadians' views of health system performance and compared these to the views of respondents from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. RESU...

stewardship is not a new concept for public policy, but has not been used to its optimum by the health policy-makers. although it is being practiced in most successful models of health system, but the onus to this function is still due till date. lately, few experts in world health organization (who) have realized its importance and have been raising the issue at different platforms to pursue t...

this survey was carried out on children less than five years of age from rural areas of three provinces in iran (west azarbaijan, bushehre, and central province), with different health care delivery systems and various types of immunization scheme, to determine the immune status of measles and the vaccine coverage. our results indicate that the rates of measles immunity and vaccine coverage for...

background: the iranian healthcare system is primarily an insurance based system. this structure has an important influence on the efficiency and equity of the provision of healthcare in iran. this paper reviews the history of the iranian healthcare system and the impact of the iranian health insurance system on healthcare performance based on the results of interviews with key opinion leaders ...