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Access to medical literature in developing countries is helped by open access publishing and initiatives to allow free access to subscription only journals. The effectiveness of these initiatives in Africa has...
Psychological problems present a huge burden of illness in our community and GPs are the main providers of care. There is evidence that longer consultations in general practice are associated with improved qua...
Older veterans may use both the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and Medicare, but the association of dual use with health outcomes is unclear. We examined the association of indirect measures of dual use ...
Hospital deaths following several hospital admissions or long hospital stays may be indicative of a low quality of dying. Although place of death has been extensively investigated at population level, hospital...
Official guidelines that promote evidence-based and cost-effective prescribing are of main relevance for obvious reasons. However, to what extent these guidelines are followed and their conditioning factors at...
Indigenous Australians experience disproportionately high prevalence of, and morbidity and mortality from diabetes. There is an urgent need to understand how Indigenous primary care systems are organised to de...
Although total influenza vaccine doses available in the 2005/2006 influenza season were over 80 million, CDC received many reports of delayed and diminished vaccine shipments in October to November of 2005. To...
The translation and cultural adaptation of widely accepted, psychometrically tested tools is regarded as an essential component of effective human resource management in the primary care arena. The Training Ne...
Systematic reviews of randomised placebo controlled trials of antidepressant medication show small and decreasing differences between pharmacological and placebo arms. In part this finding may relate to method...
There is debate about the role of crude mortality rates and case-mix adjusted mortality rates in monitoring the outcomes of treatment. In the context of quality improvement a key purpose of monitoring is to id...
The effects of socio-demographic characteristics of the respondent, including age, on valuation scores of hypothetical health states remain inconclusive. Therefore, we analyzed data from a study designed to di...
Unscheduled care is defined here as when someone seeks treatment or advice for a health problem without arranging to do so more than a day in advance. Recent health policy initiatives in England have focused o...
The Dutch Consumer Quality Index Hip Knee Questionnaire (CQI Hip Knee) was used to assess patients' experiences with and evaluations of quality of care after a total hip (THA) or total knee arthroplasty (TKA)....
Low participation rates can lead to sampling bias, delays in completion and increased costs. Strategies to improve participation rates should address reasons for non-participation. However, most empirical rese...
Zambia has recently articulated an ambitious national health program designed to meeting health-related MDGs. Public expectations are high and Zambia continues to receive significant resources from global and ...
Because of the increasing costs and anticipated shortage of Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) specialists in the care for hearing-impaired persons, an integrated care pathway that includes direct hearing aid provision...
To compare VA inpatient and outpatient utilization and expenditures of veterans seeking primary care in community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) and VA medical centers (VAMCs) in fiscal years 2000 (FY00) and...
Patients' non-adherence to medical treatment remains a persistent problem. Many interventions to improve patient adherence are unsuccessful and sound theoretical foundations are lacking. Innovations in theory ...
Liver function tests (LFTs) are routinely performed in primary care, and are often the gateway to further invasive and/or expensive investigations. Little is known of the consequences in people with an initial...
Despite recommendations for greater use of second-eye cataract surgery and the bilateral progression of the disease, there is a substantial proportion of unmet need for this treatment. Few studies have explore...
Knee osteoarthritis is a highly prevalent condition that can result in disability and reduced quality of life. The evidence suggests that total knee replacement surgery (TKR) is an effective intervention for p...
Many patients experience difficulties in following treatment recommendations. This study's objective is to identify nonadherence risk profiles regarding medication (antidepressants, antihypertensives, and oral...
Principles and methods for the allocation of healthcare resources among healthcare providers have long been health policy research issues in many countries. Healthcare reforms including the development of a ne...
As healthcare systems around the world are facing increasing physician shortages, more physicians are migrating from low to high income countries. As an illustrative case of international migration of physicia...
Interdisciplinary health research is increasingly perceived as an expectation of research institutions and funding bodies within Australia. However, little consideration has been given to the extent to which t...
Many patients encounter a variety of problems after discharge from hospital and many discharge (planning and support) interventions have been developed and studied. These primary studies have already been synt...
Variation in patients' evaluation due to general practitioner (GP) and practice factors may provide information useful in a quality improvement context. However, the extent to which differences in patients' ev...
Food hygiene in hospital poses peculiar problems, particularly given the presence of patients who could be more vulnerable than healthy subjects to microbiological and nutritional risks. Moreover, in nosocomia...
The original article was published in BMC Health Services Research 2007 7:25
More than 72% of health expenditure in India is financed by individual households at the time of illness through out-of-pocket payments. This is a highly regressive way of financing health care and sometimes l...
Pre-discharge home visits aim to maximise independence in the community. These visits involve assessment of a person in their own home prior to discharge from hospital, typically by an occupational therapist. ...
The Canadian health care system has striven to remove financial or other barriers to access to medically necessary health care services since the establishment of the Canada Health Act 20 years ago. Evidence h...
Travel burden is a key element in conceptualizing geographic access to health care. Prior research has shown that both rural and minority populations bear disproportionate travel burdens. However, many studies...
In spite of the disproportionate prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection among drug users, many remain uninformed or misinformed about the virus. Drug treatment programs are important sites of opportun...
Providing ongoing family centred support is an integral part of childhood cancer care. For families living in regional and remote areas, opportunities to receive specialist support are limited by the availabil...
In 1997 there was a major reform of the government run urban health insurance system in China. The principal aims of the reform were to widen coverage of health insurance for the urban employed and contain med...
In many countries exercise prescriptions are used in an attempt to initiate a physically active lifestyle in sedentary populations. Previous studies have primarily evaluated low intensive exercise prescription...
There are few cost-minimisation studies in telemedicine. We have compared the actual costs of providing a telepaediatric service to the potential costs if patients had travelled to see the specialist in person.
Depressive disorder is currently one of the most burdensome disorders worldwide. Evidence-based treatments for depressive disorder are already available, but these are used insufficiently, and with less positi...
An influenza pandemic may increase Emergency Department attendance 7-fold. In the absence of a validated "flu score" to assess severity and assist triage decisions from primary into secondary care, current UK ...
Problematic waiting lists in public health care threaten the equity and timeliness of care provision in several countries. This study assesses different stakeholders' views on the acceptability of waiting list...
This study examined the relationship between patient waiting time and willingness to return for care and patient satisfaction ratings with primary care physicians.
Life satisfaction among residents of institutions is becoming an important issue in a rapidly aging population. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the links between life satisfaction and ...
Common mental disorders are the most prevalent of all mental disorders, with the highest burden in terms of work absenteeism and utilization of health care services. Evidence-based treatments are available, bu...
Depressive disorder is one of the most common disorders, and is highly prevalent in chronically ill patients. The presence of comorbid depression has a negative influence on quality of life, health care costs,...
Various international studies have shown that a substantial number of patients suffer from injuries or even die as a result of care delivered in hospitals. The occurrence of injuries among patients caused by h...
Use of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), an important category of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), has increased substantially in Western countries during the past decade. Use of TCM is also wid...
Given the proliferation and the growing complexity of performance measurement initiatives in many health systems, the Netherlands and Ontario, Canada expressed interests in cross-national comparisons in an eff...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Health Services Research 2007 7:44
The political objective in many countries worldwide is to give better consideration to the interests of patients within the health system. The establishment of a federal government commissioner for the issues ...
Patients needs and experiences attract increasing attention within health care. In order to generate knowledge about the voices that emerge from collaborative experiences between members of patient association...
