BACKGROUND In an era of budget constraints for healthcare services, strategies for provision of services that improve quality whilst saving costs are highly valued. A proposed means to achieve this is consolidation of services into fewer specialist centres, but this may lead to reduced spatial accessibility. We describe a methodology which includes implementing a combinatorial optimisation algo...

The aim of this study was to assess the accessibility of patients to the treatment of tuberculosis in Ribeirão Preto, countryside of São Paulo State. Evaluation study type, with a quantity approach. Interviews with 100 patients initiated on anti-tuberculosis chemotherapy between 2006-2007 were conducted, using a structured questionnaire based on the Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT). Data wer...

Accessibility to all levels of information technology has experienced rapid progress in recent years, particularly in the health sector. Rapid penetration into this technology has led to changes in lifestyles and changes in the working procedures of institutions. In 2014, the number of Internet users reached 3 billion, and this number is predicted to exceed 8 billion in 2018. Statistics estimat...

objective: there are disparities in mental health services (mhs) utilization within and between populations and several factors are studied as its potential correlates. identifying those correlates would help health policy makers to adjust service provision with characteristics of their community. to evaluate demographic, socioeconomic and system correlates of mhs utilization among married wome...

background and objectives: induced demand in healthcare is referred to as provision of unnecessary services or the patient by health services providers, while the patient is not aware of their unnecessity. apart from being unethical, this practice can potentially disturb the supply and demand balance in the health market, pose financial load on the patient, thread the patient’s health by imposi...

OBJECTIVE Only one-fifth of the population in rural Burkina Faso uses modern health services. This article aims to identify barriers to increased use, which may help decision makers to develop policies to remove them. DESIGN This article compares perceived quality of care of 853 pairs of users and non-users of modern health services. Non-users were matched to users on age, sex, occupation of ...

BACKGROUND Assessment of physical access to health services is extremely important for planning. Complex methods that incorporate data inputs from road networks and transport systems are used to assess physical access to healthcare in industrialised countries. However, such data inputs hardly exist in many developing countries. Straight-line distances between the service provider and resident p...

Adolescents account for almost one third of India's population. They are prone to suffer from reproductive and sexual health, nutritional, mental and behavioral problems. Health services which cater exclusively to the needs of adolescents are scanty and concentrated in urban areas. Adolescent Friendly Health Services (AFHS) which provide a broad range of preventive, promotive and curative servi...

Background The main purposes of the Indonesian national insurance for maternal and delivery services were to: (1) increase antenatal and skilled birth attendance coverage, (2) increase neonatal and postnatal care, and postnatal family planning coverage, and (3) ensure effective and accountable health financing for MNCH. However, there has been a growing concern on the implementation of the poli...

Problem statement: GIS has several techniques and functions that can be used for health services planning. Each one of these functions can be applied for different health related issues. Approach: The first part of this study reviews the relevant GIS functions that are used by health care planning researches and identifies the advantages of using these functions. The second part of the study fo...