Since 1995 the United States Public Health Service has recommended voluntary prenatal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing for all pregnant women in the United States. To better understand how well this goal is being met in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Division of Public Health facilitated a review of hospital medical records for a random sample of women who gave birth in Wisconsin in 2003. O...

Although the need for psychoanalytic research is increasingly acknowledged, many psychoanalysts remain resistant to the performance and findings of this research. Objections to research include a continuing mistrust of research tools and approaches, combined with a belief in the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatments based on clinical lore and individual experience. Furthermore, as psychoan...

Strategy and implementation Health authorities have been working hard on developing health strategies and health programmes. Much of this work can come to naught. Towards the end of the financial year the contracting process takes over. Large sums of money are exchanged between purchasers and providers without explicit or detailed cognisance of the health strategy or programmes. Similarly, gene...

Although Britain's National Health Service has implemented a number of reforms designed to improve the quality of care in a cost-effective manner, healthcare litigation in the United Kingdom continues to increase. Resource shortages have prompted many patients to bring legal actions against the National Health Service in an attempt to compel a resource allocation, while other patients have sued...

Medical audit has been defined as "a systematic critical analysis of the quality of medical care, including the procedures used for diagnosis and treatment, the use of resources, and the resulting outcome for the patient". In Britain, recent reforms of the Health Service increase the need for neurologists to undertake audit. The basic principles of audit in relation to the management of common ...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to characterize patterns of formal health service utilization costs during older adults' transition from community to institutional care. METHODS Participants were 127 adults (age ≥ 65) from the British Columbia sample (N = 2,057) of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging who transitioned from community to institutional care between 1991 and 2001. He...

OBJECTIVES We described American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) infant and pediatric death rates and leading causes of death. METHODS We adjusted National Vital Statistics System mortality data for AI/AN racial misclassification by linkage with Indian Health Service (IHS) registration records. We determined average annual death rates and leading causes of death for 1999 to 2009 for AI/AN versus...

Vicky Papanikolaou, Dimitrios Adamis, Robert C. Mellon, Gerasimos Prodromitis, John Kyriopoulos Department of Health Service Management, National School of Public Health, Athens, Greece; Research and Academic Institute of Athens, Athens, Greece; Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, HSPR Department, London, UK; Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, At...

Inequality and exclusion are characteristic of the experience of UK South Asian communities. In health care, community needs are often not addressed by health and social welfare services. An increase in cultural competency is now part of identified policy. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which there is evidence of cultural competency amongst professionals concerning South Asia...