BACKGROUND Out-of-pocket payments make up about 80% of medical care spending at hospitals in Laos, thereby putting poor households at risk of catastrophic health expenditure. Social security schemes in the form of community-based health insurance and health equity funds have been introduced in some parts of the country. Drug and Therapeutics Committees (DTCs) have been established to ensure rat...

BACKGROUND The measurement of consumer satisfaction is an essential part of the assessment of health care services in terms of service quality and health care system responsiveness. Studies across Europe have described various strategies health care users employ to secure services with good quality and quick access. In Central and Eastern European countries, such strategies also include informa...

BACKGROUND Health reforms in Bulgaria have introduced major changes to the financing, delivery and regulation of health care. As in many other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, these included introducing general practice, establishing a health insurance system, reorganizing hospital services, and setting up new payment mechanisms for providers, including patient co-payments. Our study ex...

BACKGROUND Universal Health Coverage seeks to assure that everyone can obtain the health services they need without financial hardship. Countries which rely heavily on out-of-pocket (OOP) payments, including informal payments (IP), to finance total health expenditures are not likely to achieve universal coverage. The Republic of Moldova is committed to promoting universal coverage, reducing ine...

OBJECTIVES This article aims to assess the relationship between the monetary value of informal care - approximated with the caregiver's willingness to pay to reduce caregiving time - and the caregiver's need of three types of support services: care training, respite care and support group. Developing such services may be the only way to provide sustainable informal care in the future, along wit...

BACKGROUND Empirical evidence shows that the relationship between health-seeking behaviour and diverse gender elements, such as gendered social status, social control, ideology, gender process, marital status and procreative status, changes across settings. Given the high relevance of social settings, this paper intends to explore how gender elements interact with health-seeking practices among...

A choice-theoretic model of household decision-making with respect to care-giving time allocations and the use of publicly and privately financed home care services are proposed. Predictions concerning the effect of increased availability of publicly financed home care services on home care utilization, informal care giving, and health status are derived. These predictions are assessed through ...