The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of goals designed to improve the social, economic and well-being of all, while maintaining global and environmental sustainability. Health is one of the 17 goals, and focuses not only on addressing morbidity and mortality, but also on improving access to healthcare services for all through Universal Health Coverage (UHC). While disability is no...

BACKGROUND Hospital administrative data are being used to identify patients with postoperative venous thromboembolism (VTE), either pulmonary embolism (PE) or deep-vein thrombosis (DVT). However, few studies have evaluated the accuracy of these ICD-9-CM codes across multiple hospitals. METHODS AND MATERIALS The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicator (PSI)-1...

The goal of Universal health coverage (UHC) is to ensure that all people obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them [1]. This goal is based on the idea of an affordable continuum of care from preventive to curative and rehabilitative services for which essential health system resources are required. These resources include health workers, esse...

Universal health coverage (UHC) is high on the global health agenda, and priority setting is fundamental to the fair and efficient pursuit of this goal. In a recent editorial, Rob Baltussen and colleagues point to the need to go beyond evidence on cost-effectiveness and call for evidence-informed deliberative processes when setting priorities for UHC. Such processes are crucial at every step on...

BACKGROUND In 2009, researchers from Johns Hopkins University's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality; public agencies, including the FDA; and private partners, including the Emergency Care Research Institute and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) Safety Intelligence Patient Safety Organization, sought to form a public-private partnership for the promotion of patient safe...

In 2001, technocrats from four multilateral organizations selected the Millennium Development Goals mainly from the previous decade of United Nations (UN) summits and conferences. Few accounts are available of that significant yet cloistered synthesis process: none contemporaneous. In contrast, this study examines health's evolving location in the first-phase of the next iteration of global dev...

Monitoring inequalities in health is fundamental to the equitable and progressive realization of universal health coverage (UHC). A successful approach to global inequality monitoring must be intuitive enough for widespread adoption, yet maintain technical credibility. This article discusses methodological considerations for equity-oriented monitoring of UHC, and proposes recommendations for mo...

Universal health coverage (UHC) is an integral part of the United Nations sustainable development goals. The private sector plays a prominent role in achieving UHC, being primary source essential medicines for many people. However, healthcare facilities low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have insufficient stocks medicines. Simultaneously, these same carry excessive quantities other drugs,...

Introduction Achieving a fair and equitable distribution of health in the population while progressing toward universal health coverage (UHC) is a key focus of health policy in Vietnam. This paper describes health barriers experienced by women (and children by inference) in Vietnam, and measures how UHC, with reference to maternal health services and child mortality rates, is affected by select...

BACKGROUND Health insurance is currently being considered as a mechanism for promoting progress to universal health coverage (UHC) in many African countries. The concept of health insurance is relatively new in Africa, it is hardly well understood and remains unclear how it will function in countries where the majority of the population work outside the formal sector. Kenya has been considering...