BACKGROUND Population ageing fosters new models of care delivery for older people that are increasingly integrated into existing care systems. In the Netherlands, a primary-care based preventive home visitation programme has been developed for potentially frail community-dwelling older people (aged ≥75 years), consisting of a comprehensive geriatric assessment during a home visit by a practice ...

BACKGROUND Around 86% of births in Mumbai, India, occur in healthcare institutions, but this aggregate figure hides substantial variation and little is known about urban home births. We aimed to explore factors influencing the choice of home delivery, care practices and costs, and to identify characteristics of women, households and the environment which might increase the likelihood of home bi...

OBJECTIVE To examine trends and characteristics of home vaginal birth after cesarean delivery (VBAC) in the United States and selected states from 1990-2008. METHODS Birth certificate data were used to track trends in home and hospital VBACs from 1990-2008. Data on planned home VBAC were analyzed by sociodemographic and medical characteristics for the 25 states reporting this information in 2...

BACKGROUND: Although the debate on the safety and women's right of choice to a home delivery vs. hospital delivery continues in the developed countries, an undesirable outcome of home delivery, such as high maternal and perinatal mortality, is documented in developing countries. The objective was to study whether socio-economic factors, distance to maternity hospital, ethnicity, type and size o...

The observation that perinatal mortality among babies delivered at home has tended to increase beyond that among babies delivered in consultant obstetric units has caused alarm and prompted recommendations that delivery at home should be further phased out. With data derived from the Cardiff Births Survey the possibility was investigated that this trend might reflect a changing ratio of planned...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article was to describe a methodology to identify continuous quality improvement (CQI) priorities for one state's Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program from among the 40 required constructs associated with 6 program benchmarks. The authors discuss how the methodology provided consensus on system CQI quality measure priorities and describe vari...

OBJECTIVE We sought to systematically review the medical literature on the maternal and newborn safety of planned home vs planned hospital birth. STUDY DESIGN We included English-language peer-reviewed publications from developed Western nations reporting maternal and newborn outcomes by planned delivery location. Outcomes' summary odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated. ...

This study compared the costs of providing antenatal, delivery and postnatal care in the home and in a basic obstetric facility in rural Bangladesh. The average costs were estimated by interviewing midwives and from institutional records. The main determinants of cost in each setting were also assessed. The cost of basic obstetric care in the home and in a facility was very similar, although ca...

Many companies with consumer direct service models, especially grocery delivery services, have found that home delivery poses an enormous logistical challenge due to the unpredictability of demand coupled with strict delivery windows and low profit margin products. In this paper, we examine the use of incentives to influence consumer behavior in order to reduce delivery costs. We propose optimi...

Despite the recent economic downturn, electronic commerce (e-commerce) continues to show strong growth. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, e-commerce retail sales for 2002 reached at $45.6 billion, an increase of 26.9% from 2001, while total retail sales increased 3.1% during the same period. Although e-commerce sales account for only 1.4% of total sales, the digital economy continues to grow...