BACKGROUND Although the expenses of liver cirrhosis are covered by a critical illness fund under the current health insurance program in China, the economic burden associated with hepatitis B virus (HBV) related diseases is not well addressed. In order to provide evidence to address the economic disease burden of HBV, we conducted a survey to investigate the direct economic burden of acute and ...

introduction: undesirable exploitation of natural resources, resource shortage and increased hospital costs has resulted in increase in the hospital expenditure over revenue or made costs scale heavier than the income scale. the present research has been done by the aim of studying the effect of combining hospital wards on current expenses of bou ali medical & teaching center by the means of in...

introduction : the costs of traffic accidents in low- and middle-income countries are estimated to add up to $65 billion annually, which is a little higher than the amount they receive as a final aid for development. the present retrospective study aims to evaluate the treatment costs of the hospitalized injured individuals in traffic accidents. methods: the present study was carried out in ima...

Using primary data from Laos, we compare a broad range of different types of shocks in terms of their incidence, distribution between the poor and the better off, idiosyncrasy, costs, coping responses, and self-reported impacts on well-being. Health shocks are more common than most other shocks, more concentrated among the poor, more idiosyncratic, more costly, trigger more coping strategies, a...

Results-based financing (RBF) schemes-including performance based financing (PBF) and conditional cash transfers (CCT)-are increasingly being used to encourage use and improve quality of institutional health care for pregnant women in order to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in low-income countries. While there is emerging evidence that RBF can increase service use and quality, little is...

BACKGROUND Malaria is the number one public health problem in Nigeria, responsible for about 30% of deaths in under-fives and 25% of deaths in infants and 11% maternal mortality. This study estimated the economic burden of malaria in Nigeria using the cost of illness approach. METHODS A cross-sectional study was undertaken in two malaria holo-endemic communities in Nigeria, involving both com...

BACKGROUND Food decision-making is a complex process and varies according to the setting, based on cultural and contextual factors. The study aimed to understand the process of food decision-making in households in rural Kerala, India, to inform the design of a dietary behaviour change intervention. METHODS Three focus group discussions (FGDs) and 17 individual interviews were conducted from ...

This article examines (i) the background and debate over cost shifting; (ii) hospitals as business institutions that often shift the financial responsibility for their costs in the form of differential pricing; and (iii) how the cost-shifting debate affects and is affected by Medicare. The aim is to gain a better understanding of how changes in reimbursement by large government health insurance...

The costs attributed to employee health problems are usually measured by employers in terms of direct health care costs, such as medical plan claims. Although it has been understood that employee health problems also produce indirect costs for employers, their measurement has been far less frequent. At best, studies have recorded one component of indirect health costs: the time lost to employee...