Journal of Health Services Research & Policy最新文献

Objectives: This article synthesizes the evidence on what have been called innovative domestic financing mechanisms for health (i.e. any domestic revenue-raising mechanism allowing governments to diversify away from traditional approaches such as general taxation, value-added tax, user fees or any type of health insurance) aimed at increasing fiscal space for health in African countries. The article seeks to answer the following questions: What types of domestic innovative financial mechanisms have been used to finance health care across Africa? How much additional revenue have these innovative financing mechanisms raised? Has the revenue raised through these mechanisms been, or was it meant to be, earmarked for health? What is known about the policy process associated with their design and implementation?

Methods: A systematic review of the published and grey literature was conducted. The review focused on identifying articles providing quantitative information about the additional financial resources generated through innovative domestic financing mechanisms for health care in Africa, and/or qualitative information about the policy process associated with the design or effective implementation of these financing mechanisms.

Results: The search led to an initial list of 4035 articles. Ultimately, 15 studies were selected for narrative analysis. A wide range of study methods were identified, from literature reviews to qualitative and quantitative analysis and case studies. The financing mechanisms implemented or planned for were varied, the most common being taxes on mobile phones, alcohol and money transfers. Few articles documented the revenue that could be raised through these mechanisms. For those that did, the revenue projected to be raised was relatively low, ranging from 0.01% of GDP for alcohol tax alone to 0.49% of GDP if multiple levies were applied. In any case, virtually none of the mechanisms have apparently been implemented. The articles revealed that, prior to implementation, the political acceptability, the readiness of institutions to adapt to the proposed reform and the potential distortionary impact these reforms may have on the targeted industry all require careful consideration. From a design perspective, the fundamental question of earmarking proved complex both politically and administratively, with very few mechanisms actually earmarked, thus questioning whether they could effectively fill part of the health-financing gap. Finally, ensuring that these mechanisms supported the underlying equity objectives of universal health coverage was recognized as important.

Conclusions: Additional research is needed to understand better the potential of innovative domestic revenue generating mechanisms to fill the financing gap for health in Africa and diversify away from more traditional financing approaches. Whilst their revenue potential in abso

Objective: Primary health workers (PHWs) are a critical pillar of health systems but primary health care centers often struggle to attract and retain talented staff. To better understand why this is, we investigated the job preference of PHWs in a Chinese urban setting.

Methods: In a discrete choice experiment, PHWs from 15 primary health care centers in Guangzhou, China, made trade-offs between several hypothetical job scenario combinations of salary, type of health institution, bianzhi (permanent post), work years required for promotion, career development and training opportunities, educational opportunities for children, and community respect. Based on the estimate of the mixed logit model, willingness to pay and policy simulations were applied to estimate the utility of each attribute.

Results: Data were collected from 446 PHWs. The PHWs were willing to forgo Chinese Renminbi 2806.1 (US$ 438.5) per month to obtain better education opportunities for their children, making it the most important non-monetary factor. Their preferences were also influenced relatively more by salary, bianzhi, and community respect, than with the other attributes we tested for, work years required for promotion, career development and training opportunities, and type of health institution.

Conclusion: Salary is a robust predictive factor, while three non-monetary factors (opportunities for children's education, bianzhi, and community respect) are essential in retaining health workers in primary care.

Objectives: Despite significant investment in social prescribing in England over the last decade, we still do not know if it works, or how models of social prescribing fit within wider health and care policy and practice. This study explores current service delivery structures and assesses the feasibility of a national evaluation of the link worker model.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted between May and September 2020, with 25 key informants from across social prescribing services in England. Participants included link workers, voluntary, community and social enterprise staff, and those involved in policy and decision-making for social prescribing services. Interview and workshop transcripts were analysed thematically, adopting a framework approach.

Results: We found differences in how services are provided, including by individual link workers, and between organisations and regions. Standards, referral pathways, reporting, and monitoring structures differ or are lacking in voluntary services as compared to clinical services. People can self-refer to a link worker or be referred by a third party, but the lack of standardised processes generated confusion in both public and professional perceptions of the link worker model. We identified challenges in determining the appropriate outcomes and outcome measures needed to assess the impact of the link worker model.

Conclusions: The current varied service delivery structures in England poses major challenges for a national impact evaluation. Any future rigorous evaluation needs to be underpinned with national standardised outcomes and process measures which promote uniform data collection.

Background: The characterization and influence of preoperative health care use on quality-of-care indicators (e.g., readmissions) has received limited attention in populations with musculoskeletal disorders. The purpose of this study was to characterize preoperative health care use and examine its effect on quality-of-care indicators among patients undergoing elective surgery for osteoarthritis.

Methods: Data on health care use for 124,750 patients with elective surgery for osteoarthritis in Ontario, Canada, from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2018 were linked across health administrative databases. Using total health care use one-year previous to surgery, patients were grouped from low to very high users. We used Poisson regression models to estimate rate ratios, while examining the relationship between preoperative health care use and quality-of-care indicators (e.g., extended length of stay, complications, and 90-day hospital readmissions). We controlled for covariates (age, sex, neighborhood income, rural/urban residence, comorbidities, and surgical anatomical site).

Results: We found a statistically significant trend of increasing worse outcomes by health care use gradients that persisted after controlling for patient demographics and comorbidities. Findings were consistent across surgical anatomical sites. Moreover, very high users have relatively large numbers of visits to non-musculoskeletal specialists.

Conclusions: Our findings highlight that information on patients' preoperative health care use, together with other risk factors (such as comorbidities), could help decision-making when benchmarking or reimbursing hospitals caring for complex patients undergoing surgery for osteoarthritis.

Objectives: In 2022, England embarked on an ambitious reorganisation to produce an integrated health and care system, intended also to maximise population health. The newly created integrated care systems (ICSs) aim to improve quality of care, by achieving the best outcomes for individuals and populations through the provision of evidence-based services. An emerging approach for managing quality in organisations is the Quality Management System (QMS) framework. Using the framework, this study assessed how ICSs are managing and improving quality.

Methods: Four ICSs were purposively sampled, with the data collected between November 2021 and May 2022. Semi-structured interviews with system leaders (n=60) from health and social care, public health and local representatives were held. We also observed key ICS meetings and reviewed relevant documents. A thematic framework approach based on the QMS framework was used to analyse the data.

Results: The ICSs placed an emphasis on population health, reducing inequity and improving access. This represents a shift in focus from the traditional clinical approach to quality. There were tensions between quality assurance and improvement, with concerns that a narrow focus on assurance would impede ICSs from addressing broader quality issues, such as tackling inequalities and unwarranted variation in care and outcomes. Partnerships, a key enabler for integration, was seen as integral to achieving improvements in quality. Overall, the ICSs expressed concerns that any progress made in quality development and in improving population health would be tempered by unprecedented system pressures.

Conclusion: It is unclear whether ICSs can achieve their ambition. As they move away from an assurance-dominated model of quality to one that emphasises openness, learning and improvement, they must simultaneously build the digital infrastructure, staff expertise and culture to support such a shift.

Objectives: Cervical cancer accounts for 10 percent of cancer deaths among women in India. The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can protect against infection but it is not included in India's universal immunisation programme. This study aimed to assess the demand and willingness to pay for the HPV vaccine among mothers of adolescent daughters.

Methods: We conducted a contingent valuation exercise involving a hospital-based cross-sectional study to assess the demand for an HPV vaccine among mothers of adolescent daughters, their willingness to pay and its determinants. Participants were recruited at a tertiary care civil hospital in the city of Gurgaon in North India, and data was collected from December 2018 to February 2019. A questionnaire was administered to obtain demographic and awareness indicators. Payment cards were used to elicit the willingness to pay amount.

Results: Out of 319 respondents, 79% were willing to pay for the vaccine. The mean maximum willingness to pay was INR 629 (USD 35), which was less than the vaccine market price of INR 2000-3000 (USD 117-175) per dose. Participant age and number of children significantly influenced demand, while family income and awareness of cervical cancer influenced willingness to pay for the HPV vaccine. Participants were willing to spend between 3% and 34% of their monthly income on the vaccine.

Conclusions: High demand and low willingness to pay for the HPV vaccine indicate low value perception of the health outcome among mothers of adolescent children in India. A strategy aimed at a price reduction of the vaccine and increasing its demand through improved awareness is important. At the same time, subsidising the vaccine in the short run is needed.

Objectives: The National Health Service Digital Diabetes Prevention Programme is a nine-month behavioural intervention for adults in England at risk of type 2 diabetes. This qualitative study aimed to explore how service users engaged with the group support available within the programme.

Methods: The majority of participants (n = 33), all service users, were interviewed twice via telephone, at 2-4 months into the programme, and at the end of the programme at 8-10 months. Semi-structured interviews covered participants' experiences of online group support functions and how such groups served as a route of support to aid participants' behavioural changes. Data were analysed using manifest thematic analysis.

Results: The majority of participants valued the format of closed group chats, which provided an interactive platform to offer and receive support during their behaviour change journey. However, engagement with group chats reduced over time, and some participants did not find them useful when there was a lack of common interests within the group. Health coaches helped to promote engagement and build rapport among participants within the group chats. Participants reported mixed experiences of discussion forums.

Conclusions: Programme developers should consider how to optimise online group support to help service users make behavioural changes, in terms of format, participant composition and use of health coach moderators. Further research is required to better understand who might benefit most from 'group chat' or 'discussion forum' support. Health coach moderation of online support groups is likely to facilitate engagement.

Objectives: We previously analysed the preparedness to deliver a disease-modifying Alzheimer's treatment in the United Kingdom and predicted substantial wait times. This study updates the prediction for the National Health Service (NHS) in England, using an improved model and newer data.

Methods: We reviewed published data on capacity for diagnosis of cognitive impairment combined with expert input and constructed a model for wait times to access from 2023 to 2043. The model tracks patients from initial evaluation in primary care, cognitive testing by a dementia specialist, confirmatory biomarker testing with positron emission tomography (PET) scans or examination of cerebrospinal fluid and infusion delivery. Capacity for specialist visits and PET scans are assumed to be capacity constrained, and cerebrospinal fluid testing and infusion delivery to be scalable.

Results: Capacity constraints were projected to result in substantial wait times: patients referred to specialists based on a brief cognitive test, which is the current standard of care, would expect an overall initial wait times of 56 months in 2023, increasing to 129 months in 2029 and then falling slowly to around 100 months. Use of a blood test for the confirmation of Alzheimer's pathology as an additional triage step, would reduce wait times to around 17 to 25 months.

Discussion: The NHS England lacks capacity to provide timely access to a disease-modifying treatment, which is estimated to result in significant wait times and potentially avoidable disease progression. Better diagnostic tools at initial evaluation may reduce delays.

Objectives: Justice and equity-focused practices in health services play a critical but overlooked role in low back pain (LBP) care. Critical reflexivity - the ability to examine and challenge power relations, and broader social issues embedded in everyday life - can be a useful tool to foster practices that are more socially just. No research has yet explored this approach in back pain health services. This study sought to understand how clinicians construct LBP in relation to broader socio-cultural-political aspects of care and explore if those constructions changed when clinicians engaged with critically reflexive dialogues with researchers.

Methods: Using critical discourse analysis methods, this qualitative study explored institutionalised patterns of knowledge in the construction of LBP care. We conducted 22 critically reflexive dialogues with 29 clinicians from two health services in Australia - a private physiotherapy clinic and a public multidisciplinary pain clinic.

Results: Our analyses suggested that clinicians and services often constructed LBP care at an individual level. This dominant individualistic discourse constrained consideration of justice-oriented practices in the care of people with LBP. Through dialogues, discursive constructions of LBP care expanded to incorporate systems and health service workplace practices. This expansion fostered more equitable clinical and service practices - such as assisting patients to navigate health care systems, considering patients' socioeconomic circumstances when developing treatment plans, encouraging staff discussion of possible systemic changes to enhance justice, and fostering a more inclusive workplace culture. Although such expansions faced challenges, incorporating broader discourses enabled recommendations to address LBP care inequities.

Conclusions: Critical reflexivity can be a tool to foster greater social justice within health services. By expanding constructions of LBP care beyond individuals, critical reflexive dialogues can foster discussion and actions towards more equitable workplace cultures, services and systems.

Disrespect in health care often persists despite firm commitments to respectful service provision. This conceptual paper highlights how the ways in which respect and disrespect are characterised can have practical implications for how well disrespect can be tackled. We stress the need to focus explicitly on disrespect (not only respect) and propose that disrespect can usefully be understood as a failure to relate to people as equals. This characterisation is consonant with some accounts of respect but sometimes obscured by a focus on respecting people's autonomy and dignity. Emphasising equality is consistent with connections patients draw between being (dis)respected and (in)equality. It readily accommodates microaggressions as forms of disrespect, helping to understand how and why experiences of disrespect may be unintentional and to explain why even small instances of disrespect are wrong. Our view of disrespect with an emphasis on equality strengthens the demand that health systems take disrespect seriously as a problem of social injustice and tackle it at institutional, not just individual levels. It suggests several strategies for practical action. Emphasising relational equality is not an easy or short-term fix for disrespect, but it signals a direction of travel towards an important improvement ambition.