The merger of rural primary care and home health services offers the potential for increasing the administrative efficiency of health care, and thereby enhancing the quality of care and increasing access to services, particularly health promotion. However, the proposed benefits of any merger can only be realized if the merger process is successfully completed. An analysis of the factors that we...

BACKGROUND Nepal has made significant progress against the Millennium Development Goals for maternal and child health over the past two decades. However, disparities in use of maternal health services persist along geographic, economic, and sociocultural lines. METHODS Trends and inequalities in the use of maternal health services in Nepal between 1994 and 2011 were examined using four Nepal ...

Background: Avoidable mortality (AM) is one of the most important health indicators (HI) and represents the quality of care in a hospital.Objective: This study measured the efficacy of a training program for a hospital healthcare staff to reduce AM.Methods: This epidemiological study on community intervention analyzed time-series da...

Integrated care is now a recognized paradigm for health care reforms around the globe. The need to address the problem of fragmented systems of care that undermine the performance of health care systems and result in poor quality care and outcomes to people has become a key policy ambition in many countries and regions. For example, in the Americas, resolutions have been passed in support of in...

THE UNITED STATES IS A NATION IN WHICH 47 MILlion citizens have no health insurance, more than 16% of the country’s gross domestic product is spent on rapidly increasing health costs, and stark disparities exist in health care access, exemplified by 20% of the population currently residing in federally designated health professional shortage areas. These formidable challenges have led to renewe...

Background Comzmercialization of health care has contributed to widen inequities between the rich and the poor, especially in settings with suboptimal regulatory frameworks of the health sector. Poorly regulated fee-for-service payment systems generate inequity and initiate a vicious circle in which access to quality health care gradually deteriorates. Although the abolition of user fees is hig...

Background: One way to improve hospital food provision is certainly by understanding the management of hospital foodservices, but there is limited detailed information about staff roles in food provision in many hospitals around the world. Objective: The hospital meal experience of patients, a part of the services provided by hospitals, is becoming import...