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...

INTRODUCTION Patient satisfaction with care received is an important dimension of evaluation that is examined only rarely in developing countries. Evidence about how satisfaction differs according to type of provider or patient payment status is extremely limited. OBJECTIVE To (i) compare patient perceptions of quality of inpatient and outpatient care in hospitals of different ownership and (...

STUDY DESIGN Retrospective analysis of episodes of care. OBJECTIVE To assess the implications of practice setting (hospital outpatient settings versus private practice) on clinical outcomes and efficiency of care in the delivery of physical therapy services. BACKGROUND Many patients with musculoskeletal conditions benefit from care provided by physical therapists. The majority of physical t...

The number of outpatient orthopedic surgeries performed within North America continues to increase. The impact of this change in services on patient outcomes is largely unknown. The objective of this review is to compare patient outcomes and associated costs for outpatient orthopedic surgeries traditionally performed in hospital to inpatient surgeries, as well as to summarize the eligibility an...

BACKGROUND China has a large population of children under 18 years of age, whose health is of great concern to the Chinese health care system. However, few studies have been conducted to analyze the factors associated with children's unnecessary health care utilization in China. The objective of this study is to provide some empirical evidence on this issue by investigating the role of parental...

BACKGROUND There are few published estimates of the cost of pediatric antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Africa. Our objective was to estimate the outpatient cost of providing ART to children remaining in care at six public sector clinics in Zambia during the first three years after ART initiation, stratified by service delivery site and time on treatment. METHODS Data on resource utilization (d...

During the past thirty years outpatient surgery has become an increasingly important part of medical care in the United States. The number of outpatient procedures has risen dramatically since 1981, and the majority of surgeries performed in the United States now take place in outpatient settings. Using data on procedure length, we show that ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) provide a lower-cos...

BACKGROUND More than half of veterans who use Veterans Health Administration (VA) care are also eligible for Medicare via disability or age, but no prior studies have examined variation in use of outpatient services by Medicare-eligible veterans across health system, type of care or time. OBJECTIVES To examine differences in use of VA and Medicare outpatient services by disability-eligible or...

OBJECTIVE This report describes outpatient department visits in the United States in 1995. Statistics are presented on selected patient and visit characteristics. METHODS The data presented in this report were collected from the 1995 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). NHAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component of the National Health Care Survey, which measures hea...

In the past, health care was delivered mainly in acute-care facilities. Today, health care is delivered in hospital, outpatient, transitional care, long-term care, rehabilitative care, home, and private office settings. Measures to reduce health-care costs include decreasing the number of hospitals and the length of patient stays, increasing outpatient and home care, and increasing long-term ca...