The merger of rural primary care and home health services offers the potential for increasing the administrative efficiency of health care, and thereby enhancing the quality of care and increasing access to services, particularly health promotion. However, the proposed benefits of any merger can only be realized if the merger process is successfully completed. An analysis of the factors that we...

health care is considered a universal human right greatly emphasized in social welfare development in most countries. in this regard, public health care with its pervasive effects on the general level of communities' health is a top priority drawing the attention of planners and decision-makers a like. unequal and inharmonious distribution of such services leads to unequal accessibility ca...

Literature indicates that the use of promising innovations in mental health care can be improved. The advancement of telepsychology is one innovation that has been utilized as a method to reduce rural health disparities and increase the number of people with access to mental health services. This paper describes a successful pilot telepsychology program implemented in a rural community to incre...

I read the paper by Bhutta et al.1 published in the Bulletin with great interest and I congratulate the authors. Maternal and child health is a significant problem in developing countries. Factors such as poverty; cultural factors which restrict women’s autonomy, promote early marriage or support harmful traditional practices; nutritional deficiencies; reproductive factors like young age of mot...

The consolidation of a universal health system coupled with a process of regional devolution characterise the institutional reforms of the National Health System (NHS) in Spain in the last two decades. However, scarce empirical evidence has been reported on the effects of changes in health inputs, outputs and outcomes, both at the country and at the regional level. This paper examines health ca...

BACKGROUND In an attempt to devise a simpler computable tool to assist workforce planners in determining what might be an appropriate mix of health service skills, our discussion led us to consider the implications of skill mixing and workforce composition beyond the 'stock and flow' approach of much workforce planning activity. METHODS Taking a dynamic systems approach, we were able to addre...

BACKGROUND Despite enormous public sector expenditures, the effectiveness of universal coverage for health care in reducing socioeconomic disparities in health has received little attention. STUDY OBJECTIVE s: To evaluate whether universal coverage for health care reduces socioeconomic disparities in health. DESIGN Information on participants of the 1990 Nova Scotia Nutrition Survey was lin...

The aim of this discussion paper is to examine the advantages and drawbacks of employing targets, or performance indicators, to improve the performance of those delivering health care services. The paper is based on an examination of two target-setting policies initiated by Government: the 1992 Health of the Nation strategy and the 1990 General Practitioners' Contract. It is argued that the int...