BACKGROUND Systems to exempt the indigent from user fees have been put in place to prevent the worst-off from being excluded from health care services for lack of funds. Yet the implementation of these mechanisms is as rare as the operational research on this topic. This article analyzes an action research project aimed at finding an appropriate solution to make health care accessible to the in...

Eastern Health, a large public Victorian Healthcare network, conducted a WIES optimisation audit across the casemix-funded sites for separations in the 2009/2010 financial year. The audit was conducted using existing staff resources and resulted in a significant increase in casemix funding at a minimal cost. The audit showcased the skill set of existing staff and resulted in enormous benefits t...

To translate scientific discovery into improved health, we must study health care itself; i.e., how people access health care, costs or other barriers to the provision of good care, and what happens to patients as a result of this care. Health services research (HSR) is the interdisciplinary field that studies health care and its effects. This paper reviews different types of HSR and highlights...

As it is, clinical trials are the gold standard of health care research, employed to prove that the care practices they study are good. Here, the author suggests that we would do better to develop research methods that work toward another goal: to improve care practices. This requires that we no longer foreground the effectiveness but, instead, investigate the various effects of interventions. ...

The International Journal of Health Policy and Management (IJHPM) is a new journal that aims to stimulate not only inter-disciplinary research relating to health, but even an entire new generation of such journals. The challenges of improving human health worldwide clearly suggest ‘why’ such a journal is needed, but ‘how’ bridges and junctions across fields of study towards this end might be fo...

background: learning management system (lms) is a web-based system designed to support teaching and learning at an institution. the capabilities of any lms are required to be evaluated to detect the room for improvement. this study aimed at discovering the students’ perceptions of the functions of the lms at iran university of medical sciences (iums).   methods: this qualitative study included ...

BACKGROUND In low and middle income countries (LMICs), and other areas with low resources and unreliable access to the Internet, understanding the emerging best practices for the implementation of new mobile health (mHealth) technologies is needed for efficient and secure data management and for informing public health researchers. Innovations in mHealth technology can improve on previous metho...

The inaugural meeting of the Pacific Health Research Council (PHRC) was held at Sonaisali, Fiji 12-14 Oct 1998. It was attended by representatives of eight Pacific Island countries and five Pacific Island institutions. The organisation is designed to provide three levels of membership: Pacific Island countries; Pacific Island institutions; and individual Pacific Island researchers. An executive...