With the adoption of national health insurance in 1977, Korea has been utilizing fee-for-service payment with contract-based healthcare reimbursement system in 2000. Under the system, fee-for-service reimbursement has been accused of augmenting national healthcare expenditure by excessively increasing service volume. The researcher examined in this paper two major alternatives including diagnos...

In most developed countries, HCV is primarily transmitted by injecting drug users (IDUs). HCV antiviral treatment is effective, and deemed cost-effective for those with no re-infection risk. However, few active IDUs are currently treated. Previous modelling studies have shown antiviral treatment for active IDUs could reduce HCV prevalence, and there is emerging interest in developing targeted I...

introduction: the success of a health system depends on the accessibility and the quality of health services it provides. one major indicator of service quality is peoples satisfaction from the service. in this article, healthcare availability and satisfaction of people in 17th zone of tehran is investigated. methods: population research center has performed a survey in 17th zone of tehran to i...

Severe refractory asthma poses a substantial burden in terms of healthcare costs but relatively little is known about the factors which drive these costs. This study uses data from the British Thoracic Society Difficult Asthma Registry (n=596) to estimate direct healthcare treatment costs from an National Health Service perspective and examines factors that explain variations in costs. Annual m...

introduction: in order to fulfill the health and medical needs of rural people, iran's medical services insurance organization approved a plan to provide rural health insurance in 2005. the plan aimed to make an appropriate context for the activities of private health care service providers in the rural areas and to meet public expectations for access to specialized medical services. in this st...

BACKGROUND Knowledge of the configuration and costs of community rehabilitation and support for people with long-term neurological conditions (LTNCs) is needed to inform future service development and resource allocation. In a multicentre prospective cohort study evaluating community service delivery during the year post-discharge from in-patient neuro-rehabilitation, a key objective was to det...

OBJECTIVE Although prior population-based studies have found that children in foster care use more mental health services than their Medicaid peers, less is known about how different experiences in foster care impact the likelihood of mental health service use. The primary aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that instability of foster care placements is associated with higher costs for ...