background: in recent years use of family physicians has been determined as a start point of health system reform to achieve more productive health services. in this study we aimed to assess the cost-efficiency of the implementation of this plan in fars province, southern iran. methods: this cross-sectional descriptive study was done in 2007 in 18 provincial health centers as well as 224 rural ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence of insomnia, its associated factors and the use of sleep medicines. METHODS The cross-sectional survey of 1488 adults from five urban and semi urban communities of Karachi, Pakistan, was conducted from August 2007 to July 2008. All face-to-face interviews were conducted in Urdu and data was entirely based on self-reported information by the respondents. Data...

BACKGROUND The specialty of a patient's usual provider of care is associated with use of mammography and stage of breast cancer diagnosis. It is unknown if specialty of usual provider of care affects time from discovery of a breast screening abnormality to diagnostic resolution. METHODS Retrospective chart review study of 546 women who had breast biopsies at an urban public university hospita...

BACKGROUND Studies comparing the access to health care of rural and urban populations have been contradictory and inconclusive. These studies are complicated by the influence of other factor which have been shown to be related to access and utilization. This study assesses the equity of access to health care services across the rural-urban continuum in Canada before and after taking other deter...

despite the relative success of the health system and the promotion of health indicators over the last two decades, iran's health system still faces serious problems. one of the most important of them, is the inequity in access to health. theoretical studies and empirical evidences indicate that implementation of the referral system and family physician plan, is one of the main strategies ...