background: health information system (his) has been utilized for collecting, processing, storing, and transferring the required information for planning and decision‑making at different levels of health sector to provide quality services. in this study, in order to provide high‑quality his, primary health care (phc) providers’ perspective on current challenges and barriers were investigated. m...

private healthcare services in vietnam are seen as a major part of the solution to the rapid increase in need and demand for healthcare services. formally recognized over 20 years ago, the private health services coexist with public services and are available all over the country. however, the scale and size of private sector is still small compared to the public sector and public acceptance an...

recognizing the advantages of primary care as a means of improving the entire health system, this text comments on reforms of publicly funded primary health centers, and the rapid development of private forprofit providers in sweden. many goals and expectations are connected to such reforms, which equally require critical analyses of scarce resources, professional trust/motivation and business ...

background: except in emergency cases, all patients should be seen first by a primary healthcare physician who decides whether a referral to secondary care is necessary. the present study examined the reasons for patient self-referral to specialists. methods: a random sample of 1036 individuals was selected from people attending public outpatient clinics and specialists’ offices in the private ...

Traditionally, projections of US health care demand have been based upon a combination of existing trends in usage and idealized or expected delivery system changes. For example, 1990s health care demand projections were based upon an expectation that delivery models would move toward closed, tightly managed care networks and would greatly decrease the demand for subspecialty care. Today, howev...

Lehoux et al provide a timely and relevant turn on the broad and ongoing discussion around the introduction of health technology and innovation. More specifically, the authors suggest a demand-driven approach to health innovation that starts from identifying challenges and demands at the health system level. In this commentary, I review a number of underlying implications of their study in rela...

After describing the institutions for health care in China as they evolved since 1949, this paper presents statistical demand functions for health care. It applies the demand functions to explain the rapid increase in health care demand and the resulting rapid increase in price when supply failed to increase. The failure in increase in supply was traced to the system of public supply of healthc...