Background Comprehensive and coordinated management of chronic disease is a major challenge for healthcare systems. Clalit Health Services, a non-profit health fund, insures 4 million people in Israel, and provides comprehensive care through 1,300 primary and secondary clinics and 14 hospitals. The base of the health care is 1150 multi-professional primary care health centers. Clalit has a comp...

Federally qualified health centers and small primary care practices have many challenges in common: uninsured patients; growing numbers of chronically ill patients with complex needs; inadequate reimbursements by commercial health plans; and persistent staffing problems. Smaller primary care practices also face sizable barriers to participating in new delivery and payment models that are likely...

In April 2006, Massachusetts enacted a comprehensive health care reform bill that seeks to move the state to near universal insurance coverage. The bill included expanded eligibility for public coverage, subsidized insurance, market reforms, requirements for employers, and, most controversial, an individual mandate. A study of the early impacts of the state's initiative found evidence of a subs...

OBJECTIVE From a perspective of comprehensive care, the purpose of the study was to evaluate factors associated to dental care provided to Down syndrome children and adolescents. METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out including 112 pairs of mothers/Down syndrome children aged between 3 and 18 years who attended a public hospital genetics clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Southeastern Brazil,...

The national Closing the Gap framework commits to reducing persisting disadvantage in the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, with cross-government-sector initiatives and investment. Central to efforts to build healthier communities is the Aboriginal community controlled health service (ACCHS) sector; its focus on prevention, early intervention and comprehensive...

On March 21, 2010, the United States Congress passed the most comprehensive healthcare reform bill since the formation of Medicare. The legislation’s greatest impact will be to improve access for nearly 50 million Americans who are presently uninsured. Yet the bill does little to tackle the fundamental problems of the payment and delivery systems— problems that have resulted in major quality ga...

About the author: I am a community pediatrician and since January 2006 have served as chief medical officer of Children’s Health Fund (CHF), a national not-for-profit organization based in New York that supports a national network of 24 programs that provide comprehensive health care services to medically high-risk children and families. Patients served include the homeless, those who live in r...

The objective of this study was to describe the experience of educational and healthcare activities undertaken in a community regarding gynecological and breast cancer, in women with gynecological or breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy in the postoperative period, and also with their families or caregivers as part of an extension project. Activities were organized in two ways: as prevention s...

Greater numbers of infants and young children with increasingly complicated and serious physical, mental health, and developmental problems are being placed in foster care. All children in foster care need to receive initial health screenings and comprehensive assessments of their medical, mental, dental health, and developmental status. Results of these assessments must be included in the cour...

The last three decades have been fertile for the establishment of public policies geared to comprehensive health care for various population groups in Brazil. The scope of this article is to present the partial results of the analysis of the narratives of actors who participated in the creation of the Comprehensive Health Care policy for Adolescents and Youths - PNAISAJ in Brazil, in order to e...