OBJECTIVE The cost burden (called full cost) of providing health services at a referral, a district and a mission hospital in Ghana were determined. METHODS Standard cost-finding and cost analysis tools recommended by World Health Organization are used to analyse 2002 and 2003 hospital data. Full cost centre costs were computed by taking into account cash and non-cash expenses and allocating ...

BACKGROUND Aging of the population in all western countries will challenge Emergency Departments (ED) as old patients visit these health services more frequently and present with special needs. The aim of this study is to describe the trend in ED visits by patients aged 85 years and over between 2005 and 2010, and to compare their service use to that of patients aged 65-84 years during this per...

The analysis of efficiency in health care has largely focussed either on individual health care providers, or on sub-national health systems conceived as a unique decision-making unit. However, in hierarchically organized national health services, two separate entities are responsible for turning financial resources into services at the local level: health administrations and health care provid...

This overview discusses articles published in this issue of the Health Care Financing Review, entitled "Access to Health Care Services in Rural Areas: Delivery and Financing Issues." These articles focus on the following topics: rural hospitals (including closures, the impact of Federal grants, network development, and costs), managed care in rural areas, telemedicine, and the delivery of menta...

BACKGROUND There is a paucity of knowledge on the cost of health care services in Ghana. This poses a challenge in the economic evaluation of programmes and inhibits policy makers in making decisions about allocation of resources to improve health care. This study analysed the overall cost of providing health services in selected primary health centres and how much of the cost is attributed to ...

abstract background: ignoring reproductive health services during natural disasters leads to some negative consequences such as reduced access to contraceptive methods, sexual disorders, and pregnancy complications. despite previous researches, there is still more need for research on this area of health. this study attempts to identify the indicators of reproductive health in the women affecte...

objective: to study the association between social, demographic, cultural and maternal care practice variables and obstetric fistula status in ethiopia. materials and methods: the most recent ethiopia demographic and health survey conducted in 2005 is used to study the association between social, demographic, cultural and maternal care practice and obstetric fistula. we use both univariate and ...

The current trend towards restructuring to improve the standards and efficiency of public services in sub-Saharan Africa, within the framework of economic structural adjustment programmes, has stimulated debates and proposals regarding veterinary services in the region. Such debates sometimes neglect the fact that a number of different animal production systems may coexist within a single econo...

Following the British Government's implementation of policies to improve quality and introduce clinical governance into healthcare delivery in the late 1990s, the British Army commissioned a study into how primary healthcare for the Regular Army should best be delivered in UK. The study recommended a unitary command structure, with more central control based upon a model of a main headquarters ...

The health sector, a foremost service sector in Nigeria, faces a number of challenges; primarily, the persistent under-funding of the health sector by the Nigerian government as evidence reveals low allocations to the health sector and poor health system performance which are reflected in key health indices of the country.Notwithstanding, there is evidence that the private sector could be a key...