complementary and alternative medicine (cam) is frequently used in portugal and it contributes to the improvement of people’s health. cam and western medicine (wm) are taken as complements both in the diagnosis and the treatment stage. the portuguese health system is able to generate certified cam professionals but the provision of cam care and services is not included in the national health sy...

richard saltman and antonio duran take up the challenging issue of governance in their article “governance, government and the search for new provider models,” and use two case studies of health policy changes in sweden and spain to shed light on the subject. in this commentary, i seek to link their conceptualization of governance, especially its interrelated roles at the macro, meso, and micro...

background : performance of a health system is of great importance since it is the major means for improving health. until now, various methods have been proposed for assessing the performance of the health system. the method proposed by world health organization is based on three major goals of the health system: health improvement, accountability, and equity in financial contribution. equity ...

health care system is organized to achieve more efficiency as well as developing public equity and providing access to the first, second and third levels of services. family physician is in the first line of the health care system; in other words, family physician is the health system’s goalkeeper. according to classification of health services, gaining access to specialized services becomes po...

there are two dominant approaches to describe and understand the anatomy of complete health and well-being systems internationally. yet, neither approach has been able to either predict or explain occasional but dramatic crises in health and well-being systems around the world and in developed emerging market or developing country contexts. as the impacts of such events can be measured not simp...