health care financing

Acute childhood diarrhea is one of the leading causes of childhood morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan African countries. Entamoeba histolytica and Giardia lamblia are the common cause of childhood diarrhea in the region. However, there are only few studies on protozoa causing diarrhea in sub-Saharan African countries. This study was conducted to investigate the relative prevalence and explore risk factors of E. histolytica and G. lamblia among diarrheic children of under 5 years in a public hospital of Ethiopia...

INTRODUCTION: This is the first study to use the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation theory for oral health interventions in pediatric practices. The objective of this qualitative study was to assess adoption and implementation of theory-based multilevel oral health interventions, by clinicians (pediatricians and nurse practitioners) participating in a cluster randomized clinical trial, to create an oral health toolkit for widespread dissemination into pediatric practices. METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted at the conclusion of the cluster randomized clinical trial with 21 clinicians from 9 practices participating in the intervention arm...

Background Around half of the pregnant women in India do not receive full antenatal care. During the year 2020, routine health services were further affected by COVID-19. This study was conducted to assess the effect of the pandemic on the delivery/utilization of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child health, and adolescent (RMNCH+A) services. Methodology The study, conducted in Wardha district, Maharashtra, from July to December 2020, aimed to assess maternal health. In Wardha block, 200 pregnant and postnatal women were surveyed using a multistage sampling approach...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Physician burnout, which is prevalent in neurology, has accelerated in recent years. While multifactorial, a major contributing factor to burnout is a payment model that rewards volume over quality, leaving physicians overburdened and unfulfilled. The aim of this review was to investigate ways of reducing burnout while improving quality-based outcomes in a value-based health care model. RECENT FINDINGS: Burnout affects researchers, educators, clinicians, and administrators in all fields and tracks, but neurologists experience some of the worst burnout rates among specialties...

This paper contrasts the Irish experience of the 2008 economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, and the health system responses to these shocks, from the perspective of health system leaders working across both time periods. Based on semi-structured interviews with seven senior national and international officials, the research presented here forms the qualitative component of RESTORE, a five-year research project examining health system resilience and reform, funded through the Health Research Board's Research Leader Award in Ireland...

The concept of pharmacovigilance (PV) is currently highlighted after emergency authorization and worldwide distribution of the urgently launched COVID-19 novel vaccinations. As they typically serve as the initial point of patient contact for medication-related issues, understanding the knowledge, perspectives, and attitudes of community pharmacists in PV and reporting adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is crucial to improving the healthcare system and public health policies. However, previous studies in Jordan have not focused entirely on community pharmacists...

BACKGROUND: Low- and middle-income countries have committed to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) as a means to enhance access to services and improve financial protection. One of the key health financing reforms to achieve UHC is the introduction or expansion of health insurance to enhance access to basic health services, including maternal and reproductive health care. However, there is a paucity of evidence of the extent to which these reforms have had impact on the main policy objectives of enhancing service utilization and financial protection...

INTRODUCTION: The treatment of kidney disease, including hemodialysis, poses challenges in healthcare and finances. Despite limited data on hemodialysis costs and determinants in Ethiopia, existing literature indicates a paucity of evidence regarding the economic burden of hemodialysis. This study aims to evaluate the direct and indirect costs of hemodialysis among end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients, alongside associated factors, among selected governmental and private institutions in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia...

AIM: This paper describes the policy context and approaches taken to improve access to primary health care in Australia by supporting nurses to deliver improved integrated care meeting community needs. CONTEXT: In Primary Health Care (PHC), the nursing workforce are predominantly employed in the general practice sector. Despite evidence that nurse-led models of care can bridge traditional treatment silos in the provision of specialised and coordinated care, PHC nurses' scope of practice varies dramatically...

Global economic and health shocks, such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic typically impact healthcare financing and delivery. Cutler found that profound societal changes in the 20th century induced three waves of healthcare reform across seven major OECD countries. Our study investigates whether major crises in the 21st century induced similar reform waves. Through thematic analysis, we systematically compared health system changes in response to these shocks, using data from the Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the OECD...

Progressive financing of health care can help advance the equity and financial protection goals of health systems. All countries' health systems are financed in part through private mechanisms, including out-of-pocket payments and voluntary health insurance. Yet little is known about how these financing schemes are structured, and the extent to which policies in place mitigate regressivity. This study identifies the potential policies to mitigate regressivity in private financing, builds two qualitative tools to comparatively assess regressivity of these two sources of revenue, and applies this tool to a selection of 29 high-income countries...

The extent to which healthcare reforms affect health remains understudied. Healthcare reforms result in policy outputs that determine provision of medical services, which have consequences for the health of the population. We scrutinize this relationship between health policy outputs and population health, using an original dataset of healthcare reforms passed in 36 European countries from 1989 to 2019. Focusing more specifically on legislative changes implying privatization of healthcare delivery and finance, we ask the following question: What is the relationship between reforms that privatize healthcare provision and population health in terms of health outcomes and inequalities? We answer this question by relying on fixed effects time-series cross-section models...

INTRODUCTION: Proximal femur fractures are one of the most common injuries in older adults representing a serious health condition in developed as well as developing countries. AIM: This study aimed to assess the hospitalization costs of the proximal femur fracture. METHODS: We conducted a prospective descriptive study spread over six months about patients hospitalized and operated on for proximal femur fractures. In order to estimate the cost we referred to the nomenclature of professional acts and the prices set by the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Finance...

INTRODUCTION: Most research on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) focuses on the physical, sexual and psychological abuse, with less focus on the financial abuse. This study explores nursing mothers' experiences and perceptions of financial and material support from their significant others and traditional birth attendants' (TBA) observations of support to nursing mothers in their communities. METHODS: Using purposive sampling, focus groups and interviews were conducted primarily in Ewe language among nursing mothers and TBAs in rural communities in Hohoe, Volta region, Ghana...

OBJECTIVE: Globally, rates of metabolic disorders continue to climb, leading to significant disease morbidity and mortality. Individuals with mental illness are particularly prone to obesity, and some medications, such as antipsychotics, may increase the risk for metabolic disorders. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Diabetes Association recommend that patients taking antipsychotic medications receive regular screening for metabolic disorders. This study examined hospital and community factors associated with screening these patients for such disorders...

OBJECTIVES: To examine the scale of private equity investment in Australian health care delivery assets (clinics, hospitals, imaging facilities, other doctor-led health care services). STUDY DESIGN, SETTING: Extraction of information about private equity acquisitions of hospitals, clinics, imaging centres and in vitro fertilisation facilities in Australia, 2008-2022, from a commercial database (PitchBook), supplemented by information from publicly available online media sources...

School eye health (SEH) has been on the global agenda for many years, and there is mounting evidence available to support that school-based visual screenings are one of the most effective and cost-efficient interventions to reach children over five years old. A scoping review was conducted in MEDLINE, Web of Science, PubMed, and CINHAL between February and June 2023 to identify current priorities in recent literature on school eye health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Selection of relevant publications was performed with Covidence, and the main findings were classified according to the WHO Health Promoting Schools framework (HPS)...

BACKGROUND: Morocco is engaged in a health system reform aimed at generalizing health insurance across the whole population by 2025. This study aims to build a national database of costs at all levels of public hospitals in Morocco and craft this database as a resource for further use in a strategic purchasing system. It also aims at estimating the funding gap and the budget that should be secured for public hospitals in Morocco to fully play their roles in the current ambitious reform...

Healthcare organizations have realized that Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide a competitive edge through personalized patient experiences, improved patient outcomes, early diagnosis, augmented clinician capabilities, enhanced operational efficiencies, or improved medical service accessibility. However, deploying AI-driven tools in the healthcare ecosystem could be challenging. This paper categorizes AI applications in healthcare and comprehensively examines the challenges associated with deploying AI in medical practices at scale...

OBJECTIVE: To quantify the incremental impact that population dispersion has on the number of health personnel in Primary Care in Alto Aragón, using a reproducible method. METHOD: Descriptive observational study that compares health the number of health personnel (family medicine, pediatrics and nursing) in EAP and PA emergencies in 2019 in an unpopulated and dispersed territory such as Huesca, with the number that would correspond to it by applying population ratios per professional of hypothetical constructs with different population densities...