CONTEXT Wide variations in Medicare expenditures exist across regions, but little is known about whether beneficiaries residing in low-expenditure regions perceive receiving lower-quality care than those in high-expenditure regions. OBJECTIVE To evaluate how Medicare beneficiaries' perceptions of their health care are related to per capita expenditure in the areas where they live. DESIGN, SET...

BACKGROUND Moving the clinical services from tuberculosis (TB) dispensary to the integrated county hospital (called integrated approach) has been practiced in China; however, it is unknown the quality of TB care in the integrated approach and in the dispensary approach. METHODS A total of 202 new TB patients were investigated using structured questionnaires in three counties implementing the ...

BACKGROUND Age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass (SMM) and function (sarcopenia) are associated with poor health outcomes and an economic burden on health care services. An appropriate diet and physical activity have been proposed for prevention and treatment of sarcopenia. Nevertheless, the effects on medical service utilization and costs remain unclear. This study determined the effects of...

OBJECTIVES A key policy question for the government of Uganda is how to equitably allocate primary health care pharmaceutical budgets to districts. This paper seeks to identify variables influencing current primary health care pharmaceutical expenditure and their usefulness in allocating prospective pharmaceutical budgets to districts. METHODS This was a cross sectional, retrospective observa...

BACKGROUND At the beginning of 2007, health care reforms were implemented in Hungary in order to decrease public expenditure on health care. Reforms involved the increase of co-payments for pharmaceuticals and the introduction of co-payments for health care services. OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper is to examine the progressivity of household expenditure on health care during the reform...

OBJECTIVE To assess the degree to which the Chinese people are protected from catastrophic household expenditure and impoverishment from medical expenses and to explore the health system and structural factors influencing the first of these outcomes. METHODS Data were derived from the Fourth National Health Service Survey. An analysis of catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment from...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the extent of catastrophic household health care expenditure and determine the factors responsible for it in Nouna District, Burkina Faso. METHODS We used the Nouna Health District Household Survey to collect data on 800 households during 2000-01 for our analysis. The determinants of household catastrophic expenditure were identified by multivariate logistic regression m...

We document a robust negative correlation in which residing in a larger family is associated with lower consumption of medical care ceteris paribus. For men, an additional household member is associated with between $659.69 and $1039.97 fewer expenditures on health care and, for women, the estimates range between $391.28 and $728.66. Using quantile regression, the magnitude of the coefficients ...