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Delivery of community-based prevention services for HIV, malaria, and diarrhea is a major priority and challenge in rural Africa. Integrated delivery campaigns may offer a mechanism to achieve high coverage an...
Social audits are typically observational studies, combining qualitative and quantitative uptake of evidence with consultative interpretation of results. This often falters on issues of causality because their...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Focus groups, rapid assessment procedures, key informant interviews and institutional reviews of local health services provide valuable insights on health service resources and performance. A long-standing cha...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Maps can portray trends, patterns, and spatial differences that might be overlooked in tabular data and are now widely used in health research. Little has been reported about the process of using maps to commu...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Corruption pervades educational and other institutions worldwide and medical schools are not exempt. Empirical evidence about levels and types of corruption in medical schools is sparse. We conducted surveys i...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
In rebuilding devastated health services, the government of Afghanistan has provided access to basic services mainly by contracting with non-government organisations (NGOs), and more recently the Strengthening...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
The Bangladesh government implemented a pilot Hospital Improvement Initiative (HII) in five hospitals in Sylhet division between 1998 and 2003. This included management and behaviour change training for staff,...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Since 2005, the Tłįchǫ Community Services Agency (TCSA) in Canada's Northwest Territories (NT) has addressed rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (STI). In 2009, STI rates in the NT were ten times h...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
In Bangladesh, widespread dissatisfaction with government health services did not improve during the Health and Population Sector Programme (HPSP) reforms from 1998-2003. A 2003 national household survey docum...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Nigeria continues to have high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. This is partly associated with lack of adequate obstetric care, partly with high risks in pregnancy, including heavy work. We examined ...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
After election in 1994, the South African government implemented national and regional programmes, such as the Wild Coast Spatial Development Initiative (SDI), to provoke economic growth and to decrease inequi...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
The government of Pakistan introduced devolution in 2001. Responsibility for delivery of most health services passed from provincial to district governments. Two national surveys examined public opinions, use,...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Four social audits in 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2009 identified actions that Nicaragua could take to reduce corruption and public perception in primary health care and other key services.
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Community participation was a core tenet of Primary Health Care as articulated in the 1970s. How this could be generated and maintained was less clear. This historical article describes development of protocol...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Health planners and managers make decisions based on their appreciation of causality. Social audits question the assumptions behind this and try to improve quality of available evidence. The method has its ori...
This article is part of a Supplement: Volume 11 Supplement 2
Previous research addressed the development of a classification scheme for quality improvement systems in European hospitals. In this study we explore associations between the 'maturity' of the hospitals' qual...
Continuity of care is a key component of care in complex and chronic conditions. Despite its importance, it is often absent in chronic-disease management. One challenge has been identifying tools to measure ca...
Healthcare service innovations are considered to play a pivotal role in improving organisational efficiency and responding effectively to healthcare needs. Nevertheless, healthcare organisations encounter majo...
We carried out an investigation in five provinces in China to assess treatment adherence and identify factors associated with insufficient treatment adherence in tuberculosis (TB) patients in mountainous, rura...
According to a national reference, 15% of German children and adolescents are overweight (including obese) and 6.3% are obese. An earlier study analysed the impact of childhood overweight and obesity on differ...
From a health services perspective, peer-based resources merit special attention. Participation in self-help fellowships, like the Twelve Step Groups (TSGs), have been shown to improve outcomes of patients wit...
Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is an effective, but also cost-intensive health care intervention for end stage osteoarthritis. This investigation was designed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of TKA before ve...
Most services provided by health and social care organisations for older people living at home rely on interprofessional working (IPW). Although there is research investigating what supports and inhibits how p...
There is widespread agreement on the need for scaling up in the health sector to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But many countries are not on track to reach the MDG targets. The dominant appr...
Medical residents are key figures in delivering health care and an important target group for patient safety education. Reporting incidents is an important patient safety domain, as awareness of vulnerabilitie...
Little is known about how to use patient feedback to improve experiences of health care. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) conducts regular patient surveys that have indicated improved care experiences o...
This study aims to design an empirical test on the sensitivity of the prescribing doctors to the price afforded for the patient, and to apply it to the population data of primary care dispensations for cardiov...
Comparisons of patient experiences between providers are increasingly used as an index of performance. The present study describes the ability of patient experience surveys to discriminate between healthcare p...
Efficacious strategies for the primary prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) are underused, and, when used, have low adherence. Existing efforts to improve use and adherence to these efficacious strategie...
Safe and timely access to effective and appropriate medication through primary care settings is a major concern for all countries addressing both acute and chronic disease burdens. Legislation for nurses and o...
Consistent healthcare decisionmaking requires systematic consideration of decision criteria and evidence available to inform them. This can be tackled by combining multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and He...
The overlapping epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections prompted the World Health Organisation in 2004 to recommend collaboration between national TB and HIV program...
Leadership and staffing are recognised as important factors for quality of care. This study examines the effects of ward leaders' task- and relationship-oriented leadership styles, staffing levels, ratio of re...
Patients' non-adherence to drug therapy is a major problem for society as it is associated with reduced health outcomes. Generally, approximately only 50% of patients with chronic disease in developed countrie...
Individuals' experience of interacting with the healthcare system has significant impact on their overall health and well-being. To relate patients' experiences to a common set of standards, the World Health O...
Increasing population rates of cardiac catheterization can lead to the detection of more people with high risk coronary disease and opportunity for subsequent revascularization. However, such a strategy should...
There is variation in cardiac catheterization utilization across jurisdictions. Previous work from Alberta, Canada, showed no evidence of a plateau in the yield of high-risk disease at cardiac catheterization ...
Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often experience exacerbations of the disease that require hospitalization. Current guidelines offer little guidance for identifying patients whose cl...
Although the association between mortality and admission to intensive care units (ICU) in the "after hours" (weekends and nights) has been the topic of extensive investigation, the timing of discharge from ICU...
In the UK there are almost three times as many beds in care homes as in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals. Care homes rely on primary health care for access to medical care and specialist services. Repea...
Time nurses spend with patients is associated with improved patient outcomes, reduced errors, and patient and nurse satisfaction. Few studies have measured how nurses distribute their time across tasks. We aim...
Long waiting times for registration to see a doctor is problematic in China, especially in tertiary hospitals. To address this issue, a web-based appointment system was developed for the Xijing hospital. The a...
The decision whether to treat conservatively or reconstruct surgically a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an ongoing subject of debate. The high prevalence and associated public health burden of torn A...
The challenges posed by the rapidly ageing population, and the increased preponderance of disabled people in this group, coupled with the rising level of public expenditure required to service the complex orga...
Research on health care utilization in low income countries suggests that patients frequently bypass PHC facilities in favour of higher-level hospitals - despite substantial additional time and financial costs...
In health care, many organizations are working on quality improvement and/or innovation of their care practices. Although the effectiveness of improvement processes has been studied extensively, little attenti...
As a result of the previous part of this trial, many patients with cardiovascular disease were expected to receive a statin for the first time. In order to provide these patients with comprehensive information...
Tropical infectious diseases are called neglected, because they are, inter alia, characterized by an R&D deficit. A similar deficit exists for rare (orphan) diseases which neither promise a sufficient return o...
Limited evidence exists regarding the association of pre-existing mental health conditions in patients with stroke and stroke outcomes such as rehospitalization, mortality, and function. We examined the associ...
How companies deal with complaints is a particularly challenging aspect in managing the quality of their service. In this study we test the direct and relative effects of service quality dimensions on consumer...
