Decentralization In Health Care: Strategies And Outcomes


Book Description

Exploring the capacity and impact of decentralization within European health care systems, this book examines both the theoretical underpinnings as well as practical experience with decentralization.




EBOOK: Decentralization in Health Care: Strategies and Outcomes


Book Description

·What are the characteristics that define a Social Health Insurance system? ·How is success measured in SHI systems? ·How are SHI systems developing in response to external pressures? Using the seven Social Health Insurance countries in western Europe - Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland - as well as Israel, this important book reviews core structural and organizational dimensions, as well as recent reforms and innovations. Covering a wide range of policy issues, the book: ·Explores the pressures these health systems confront to be more efficient, more effective, and more responsive ·Reviews their success in addressing these pressures ·Examines the implications of change on the structure of SHI’s as they are currently defined ·Draws out policy lessons about past experience and likely future developments in SHI systems in a manner useful to policymakers in Europe and elsewhere Social Health Insurance Systems in Western Europe will be of interest to students of health policy and management as well as health managers and policy-makers. Contributors: Helmut Brand, Jan Bultman, Reinhard Busse, Laurent Chambaud, David Chinitz, Diana M.J. Delnoij, André P. den Exter, Aad A. de Roo, Anna Dixon, Isabelle Durand-Zaleski, Hans F.W. Dubois, Josep Figueras, Bernhard Gibis, Stefan Greß, Bernhard J. Güntert, Jean Hermesse, Maria M. Hofmarcher, Martin McKee, Pedro W. Koch-Wulkan, Claude Le Pen, Kieke G.H. Okma, Martin Pfaff, Richard B. Saltman, Wendy G.M. van der Kraan, Jürgen Wasem, Manfred Wildner, Matthias Wismar.




Crossing the Global Quality Chasm


Book Description

In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.




Health System Decentralization


Book Description




Improving Healthcare Quality in Europe Characteristics, Effectiveness and Implementation of Different Strategies


Book Description

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.




The Healthcare Imperative


Book Description

The United States has the highest per capita spending on health care of any industrialized nation but continually lags behind other nations in health care outcomes including life expectancy and infant mortality. National health expenditures are projected to exceed $2.5 trillion in 2009. Given healthcare's direct impact on the economy, there is a critical need to control health care spending. According to The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes, the costs of health care have strained the federal budget, and negatively affected state governments, the private sector and individuals. Healthcare expenditures have restricted the ability of state and local governments to fund other priorities and have contributed to slowing growth in wages and jobs in the private sector. Moreover, the number of uninsured has risen from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008. The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes identifies a number of factors driving expenditure growth including scientific uncertainty, perverse economic and practice incentives, system fragmentation, lack of patient involvement, and under-investment in population health. Experts discussed key levers for catalyzing transformation of the delivery system. A few included streamlined health insurance regulation, administrative simplification and clarification and quality and consistency in treatment. The book is an excellent guide for policymakers at all levels of government, as well as private sector healthcare workers.




Is Decentralization Good for Development?


Book Description

Is decentralisation good for development? This book explains when the answer is 'Yes' and when it is 'No'. It shows how decentralisation can be designed to drive development forward, and focuses on the institutional incentives that can strengthen democracy, boost economies, and improve public sector performance.




Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries


Book Description

Based on careful analysis of burden of disease and the costs ofinterventions, this second edition of 'Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition' highlights achievable priorities; measures progresstoward providing efficient, equitable care; promotes cost-effectiveinterventions to targeted populations; and encourages integrated effortsto optimize health. Nearly 500 experts - scientists, epidemiologists, health economists,academicians, and public health practitioners - from around the worldcontributed to the data sources and methodologies, and identifiedchallenges and priorities, resulting in this integrated, comprehensivereference volume on the state of health in developing countries.




The Fragmentation of U.S. Health Care


Book Description

Why is the American health care system so fragmented in the care it gives patients? This title approaches this question and more with a highly interdisciplinary approach. The articles included in the work address legal and regulatory issues, including laws that mandate separate payments for each provider.




Assuring the Quality of Health Care in the European Union


Book Description

People have always travelled within Europe for work and leisure, although never before with the current intensity. Now, however, they are travelling for many other reasons, including the quest for key services such as health care. Whatever the reason for travelling, one question they ask is "If I fall ill, will the health care I receive be of a high standard?" This book examines, for the first time, the systems that have been put in place in all of the European Union's 27 Member States. The picture it paints is mixed. Some have well developed systems, setting standards based on the best available evidence, monitoring the care provided, and taking action where it falls short. Others need to overcome significant obstacles.