the article by brenna and spandonaro on interregional mobility for acute hospital care in italy raises important issues concerning social and territorial equity in a healthcare system. based on regions and private providers’ strategic behavior, the hypothesis adopted to explain patient cross-border mobility (cbm), demonstrated by statistical analysis, may be further explored using qualitative m...

the key argument of this commentary is that patient choice has a broader meaning than suggested by consumerist choice models. in increasingly marketized health care systems with diversified and knowledge-based service arrangements, patients are continuously obliged to choose insurers, physicians or hospitals and treatments—whether they like it or not. however, health care users refer to a wide ...

background in early 2012, national health insurance scheme (nhis) members in ashanti region were allowed to choose their own primary healthcare providers. this paper investigates the factors that enrolees in the ashanti region considered in choosing preferred primary healthcare providers (ppps) and direction of association of such factors with the choice of ppp.   methods using a cross-sectiona...

background in recent years, accreditation of private hospitals followed by decentralisation of the italian national health service (nhs) into 21 regional health systems has provided a good empirical ground for investigating the tiebout principle of “voting with their feet”. we examine the infra-regional trade-off between greater patient choice (due to an increase in hospital services supply) an...

Patient and user choice are at the forefront of the debate on the future direction of health and public services provision in many industrialized countries in Europe and elsewhere. It is used both, as a means to achieve desired policy goals in public health care systems such as greater efficiency and improved quality of care, and as a good with its own intrinsic value. However, the evidence sug...

patient and user choice are at the forefront of the debate on the future direction of health and public services provision in many industrialized countries in europe and elsewhere. it is used both, as a means to achieve desired policy goals in public health care systems such as greater efficiency and improved quality of care, and as a good with its own intrinsic value. however, the evidence sug...