Seven percent of all health expenditures in the United States in 1987 was allocated for medications. Accurate prescribing decisions thus have crucial implications for both economic and clinical aspects of health care. A review of 44 empirical studies indicates that different strategies to improve the prescription practices of primary care physicians have proved effective to varying degrees; adm...

Sustainability of the Canadian health system is currently foremost in the minds of many stakeholders. Historically, health expenditures have been viewed as ever increasing and with little visible economic return. Recently, economists have recognized the health arena as an important growth area within the total economy and have begun quantitative analyses of the impact of health investments as d...

This study provides an overview of funding mechanisms in Croatian health care and analyses them in terms of sustainability, efficiency and equity. The study presents an in depth investigation of problems facing funding health care in Croatia: high expenditure, inadequate financial resources, continuous deficits of the state insurance fund, lack of transparency in funding, an aging population, e...

background one common challenge to social systems is achieving equity in financial contributions and preventing financial loss. because of the large and unpredictable nature of some costs, achieving this goal in the health system presents important and unique problems. the present study investigated the household financial contributions (hfcs) to the health system.   methods the study investiga...

INTRODUCTION Many low and middle-income countries rely on out-of-pocket payments to help finance health care. These payments can pose financial hardships for households; valid measurement of this type of economic burden is therefore critical. This study examines the validity of five survey measures of economic burden caused by health care payments. METHODS We analyzed 2002/03 World Health Sur...

OBJECTIVE To estimate out-of-pocket costs and the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure in people admitted to hospital with acute coronary syndromes in Asia. METHODS Participants were enrolled between June 2011 and May 2012 into this observational study in China, India, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. Sites were required to enrol a minimum of 10 consecuti...

OBJECTIVE The main objective of this study was to examine variability among states for 3 indicators of the family financial burden related to caring for children with special health care needs. METHODS Data were from a 2001 national survey of households with children (<18 years of age) with special health care needs, with a representative sample from each state. The outcomes examined included...

BACKGROUND This study will provide detailed specification of those variables and determinants of unpredictable health expenditure in Iran, and the requirements to reduce extensive effects of the factors affecting households' payments for health and other goods and services inappropriately. METHOD This study aims to identify measures of fair financing of health services and determinants of fai...

OBJECTIVE This study analyzed the lifetime health care expenditures and life years lost associated with diabetes in the U.S. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from 1997 to 2000, and the NHIS Linked Mortality Public-use Files with a mortality follow-up to 2006 were used to estimate age-, race-, sex-, and BMI-...