In England as elsewhere, policy makers are trying to reduce the pressure on costs due to rising hospital admissions by encouraging GPs to refer fewer patients to hospital specialists. This could have an impact on elective treatment levels, particularly procedures for conditions which are not...

Introduction: In the current economic context, all partners in health care delivery systems, be they public or private, are obliged to identify the factors that influence the utilization of health care services. To improve our understanding of the phenomena that underlie these relationships,...

Background Productivity in the healthcare sector has evolved as an appealing research topic in the last few years. Despite the growing interest, the extant scientific literature mostly concentrates on methodologies rather than theoretical and practical insights. Although diverse methodologies...

This paper examines major problems that are associated with the healthcare system in the United States. Problems discussed include the rising cost of healthcare in America, high cost of drugs, variation in hospital costs, the proliferation of new prescription drugs that provide little or no...

This paper investigated the delivery of health services based on data recorded at two medium-sized hospitals: Erenkoy Mental Health Research and Training Hospital located in Istanbul/Turkey and LVR-Klinik Viersen in Germany. A comparison of quality management systems in terms of certification...

Although the crisis of health care in the United States is widely acknowledged – marked by poor health outcomes, high costs, unequal access, and widening health inequities – its structural underpinnings have not been adequately addressed, and reformers have settled on promoting piecemeal...

One key assumption underlying interventions and policies aiming to promote development by increasing the accumulation of human capital, particularly health capital, is that increasing access to and utilisation of health services will translate into health capital. This assumption, from...

Cancer is a leading global cause of death and disability responsible for approximately 7.6 million deaths each year. Around one third of cancers are attributable to a small number of preventable risk factors – including smoking and the harmful consumption of alcohol – for which effective...

If doctors take the costs of treatment into account when prescribing medication, their objectives differ from their patients' objectives because the patients are insured. This misalignment of interests hampers communication between patient and doctor. Giving cost incentives to doctors increases...

This article demonstrates experimentally that individuals making decisions about their health management are affected by the decision making environment and that law and policy can serve important roles in improving the decision environment. With the support of a generous grant from the Robert...