Lean, as it applies to business, has come to signify simplicity, swift response, and efficiency. The concept is to do more with less; namely, to use resources in the most productive way possible through the elimination of all types of waste. The Lean approach can be applied to any field, including healthcare, in which the exponential growth of costs is widespread. Hospitals began experimenting ...

background and objectives: outsourcing healthcare and the associated services has proven as an effective strategy for enhancing hospital performance and improving quality of services. despite, the concept is relatively new in iran, calling for studies investigating different aspects of the issue and its potential benefits. thus, this study was conducted to explore the impact of outsourcing mana...

BACKGROUND Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common cause of chronic progressive neurological disability where reduction in quality of life is an important feature. Many GPs have MS patients with a range of disabilities. Little is known about the supply of medical and community services and how this compares with demand. AIM We aim to describe a community based sample of MS patients and investigat...

E-government offers the potential to provide easy and flexible access to a vast array of government services, particularly in outlying regions where traditional service centers are scarce and costly. However, past research shows that online services use decreases in non-urban areas. The objective of this chapter is to identify factors that influence the use of e-government services in outlying ...

Understanding what drives households to seek medical services is challenging because the factors affecting the perceived benefits and costs of professional health care can be the same. In this paper, we disentangle the channels through which different factors affect the use of medical services, whether through perceived benefits and/or costs. We do this by exploiting data on why individuals hav...

Despite the popularity of online auctions as a new e-commerce operating model, few studies have explored why sellers intend to pay for the services of particular auction sites, especially while other free auction services exist. Developed on the basis of the theory of perceived value, this study includes network externalities in seller perceptions and explores why sellers intend to pay for thes...

3G, processor of 2G services, is a family of standards for mobile telecommunications defined by the International Telecommunication Union [1]. 3G services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, video calls, and wireless data, all in a mobile environment. It allows simultaneous use of speech and data services and higher data rates.3G is defined to facilitate growth, increased bandwidth and ...