This paper explores the relevance of the literature on for-profit versus not-for-profit hospital care to the Alberta government's Health Care Protection Act and to contracting-out of health services more generally. Thirty-four studies were identified and most found no difference between...

Alberta Health Services maintains a database of children, adolescents and adults referred to the child and adolescent mental health and psychiatry intake service. In this study, we sought to systematically assess the impact, if any, of English language proficiency on enrolment of children for...

Our results suggest that the benefit policy change did not impact life-saving procedures or reduce patients’ burden of disease among AMI patients. The effect of ‘provider gaming’ was the strongest for the high reimbursement group as a result of the global budget cap pressure. The current...

Widespread integration of market-based incentives into healthcare systems calls for - and has elicited - increasing adoption of risk adjustment. By deterring selection, risk adjustment helps to assure fair and efficient payments among health insurers or capitated provider groups. However, since...

Improving patient compliance with physicians’ treatment or prescription recommendations is an important goal in medical practice. This paper examines the causal relationship between treatment progress and patient compliance. We hypothesize that patients balance expected benefits and costs...

Improving patient compliance with physicians' treatment or prescription recommendations is an important goal in medical practice. We examine the relationship between treatment progress and patient compliance. We hypothesize that patients balance expected benefits and costs during a treatment...