After more than 10 years of development, two different views of practice guidelines are emerging: either as an educational tool for the medical profession, or as a forum where health care issues can be debated by physicians and non-medical groups. Physicians use practice guidelines in the former...

The 1999 reform of the Italian healthcare system has softened the effects of the 1992 shift to market mechanisms and competition within healthcare by promoting cooperation and partnerships among providers and Local Health Units (LHUs). In addition, it has facilitated the completion of...

Objective: The value of early detection of subclinical hypothyroidism is the object of a long lasting debate. In this study, we assessed the cost effectiveness of a policy based upon screening for this condition through thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4)...

Through a comparative study of six Italian hospitals, the paper develops and tests a framework to analyze hospital-wide patient flow performance.

Private health care expenditure ranges from 15% to 30% of total healthcare spending in OECD countries. The literature suggests that there should be an inverse correlation between quality of public services and private expenditures. The main objective of this study is to explore the association...

Policies aimed at containing health costs should focus on interventions that help to reduce disability, which is a key predictor of long-term costs. </AbstractSection> Copyright Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013

Understanding the interplay between informal care and formal healthcare is important because it sheds light on the financial implications of such interactions and may result in different policies. On the basis of a major database on 532 Italian stroke patients enrolled in the period 2007–2008,...

Public sector organizations are simultaneously subject to three types of environmental pressure: institutional, economic and political. How do these pressures influence the strategic behaviour of public organizations when confronted with efficiency-oriented reforms? We focus on the strategic...