BACKGROUND Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is more successful in reducing hospitalization when baseline use is high. However, with a growing recovery-focus, ACT may be useful for people with severe mental illness who are difficult to engage but not high users of inpatient services. This study investigated hospitalization 2 years before and 2 years after ACT enrollment amongst patients both ...

OBJECTIVE This study examined the relationship between the availability of mental health outpatient services provided by 40 publicly funded community service boards (CSBs) and the use of inpatient mental health treatment among Medicaid recipients. METHODS Three-year data were obtained for Medicaid recipients aged 18-64 from the Medicaid claims database for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Medica...

OBJECTIVE Little is known about inpatient psychiatry settings and the services they provide for children and adolescents in Ontario. This paper provides the first broad description of unit characteristics, services provided, and patient characteristics in these settings. METHOD Nominated representatives from Ontario hospitals with generic mental health beds (i.e., providing inpatient care acr...

BACKGROUND Rare chronic diseases of childhood are often complex and associated with multiple health issues. Such conditions present significant demands on health services, but the degree of these demands is seldom reported. This study details the utilisation of hospital services and associated costs in a single case of surfactant protein C deficiency, an example of childhood interstitial lung d...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the incidence and describe the profile of catastrophic expenditures and impoverishment due to household out-of-pocket payments, comparing the periods before and after the introduction of universal health care coverage (UC). METHODS Secondary data analyses of socioeconomic surveys on nationally representative households pre-UC in 2000 (n = 24,747) and post-UC in 2002 (n =...

BACKGROUND Universal Zero-Markup Drug Policy (UZMDP) mandates no price mark-ups on any drug dispensed by a healthcare institution, and covers the medicines not included in the China's National Essential Medicine System. Five tertiary hospitals in Beijing, China implemented UZMDP in 2012. Its impacts on these hospitals are unknown. We described the effects of UZMDP on a participating hospital, J...