Applications accessible through mobile devices, such as mobile phones, are playing an increasingly important part in the delivery of high quality and personalized healthcare services. In this paper, we examine current usage of mobile devices and networks by mobile healthcare applications, and present our views on how mobile devices and networks could be used for creating patient-centered health...

BACKGROUND Generic Medicines are an important policy option allowing for access to affordable, essential medicines. Quality of generic medicines must be guaranteed through the activities of national medicines regulatory authorities. Existing negative perceptions surrounding the quality of generic medicines must be addressed to ensure that people use them with confidence. Campaigns to increase t...

This paper aims to provide a description of the need for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) for Limited English Proficient (LEP) patients, an identification of how the lack of CLAS for LEP patients can compromise patient safety and healthcare quality, and discuss barriers to the provision of CLAS.

Background Independent treatment centres (ITCs) are a growing phenomenon in many healthcare systems. Focus factory theory predicts that ITCs provide high quality healthcare with low prices, through specialisation, high-volume and routine. This study examines if ITC care outperforms general hospital (GH) care within a regulated compe...

To meet the economic challenges faced in the healthcare industry and to continue to provide low cost and high quality services; healthcare organizations and private hospitals in particular are striving to control operational costs. Thus, considering cost is essential in order to accomplish this. Costing should promote cost effectiveness of medical practice, maximize the resources available to t...

The main asset of farmers is their labour and the utilization of healthcare services will help to improve their health and thus productivity. Some of the problems inhibiting proper utilization of healthcare services in Nigeria include non-availability, inaccessibility and high cost of medical care. The aim of this paper is to examine the determinants of the Utilization of Healthcare Services am...

OBJECTIVE To develop methods for systematically reviewing evidence for identifying effective laboratory medicine (LM) practices associated with improved healthcare quality outcomes. RELEVANCE Although many evidence-evaluation systems have been developed, none are designed to include and rate healthcare quality improvement studies to identify evidence-based practices that improve patient safet...

Despite extensive research on defining and measuring health care quality, little attention has been given to different stakeholders' perspectives of high-quality health care services. The main purpose of this study was to explore the attributes of quality healthcare in the Iranian context. Exploratory in-depth individual and focus group interviews were conducted with key healthcare stakeholders...

    Background: Providing fair access to high-quality healthcare services is one of the most important goals of health systems. This study was conducted between 2012 and 2013 to determine the level of equity in the quality of hospital services in Iran.    Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 1,003 patients were chosen from 100 hospitals in Iran with multi-stage rand...