The relationship between Public Administration and the people is one that requires legitimacy and compromise in order to solve complex problems. Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their families during the last fifty years have put forth an agenda that calls for the advancement of rights for the disabled and more integration into the larger society. In this arena, government, with post civil rights legislation like the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), plays a huge role in promoting social awareness and bringing down barriers of stigmatization, understanding, and access. This struggle is fought on many fronts. A significant part of the effort focuses on moving the locus of long-term care of the disabled, including the IDD population, from an institutional setting to the least restrictive setting that will foster social ties and integration. Since the early 1980s as part of this effort to deinstitutionalize the disabled, legislation at both the federal and state level has supported and incentivized the creation of Home and Community Based Service (HCBS) programs. HCBS waivers, as they are typically called, are also promoted as a means of containing government expenditures for long-term care. However, the effectiveness of these waivers is poorly understood. The critical questions being - Do HCBS waivers promote and create an environment that increases awareness of the needs of IDD individuals? Do the programs help reduce stigmatization, promote understanding, and increase access to services and activities that foster social interaction? Or, do HCBS waivers create a new "iron cage" where the intellectually or developmentally disabled are once again relegated to existing as second class citizens? In this research, programs are mapped and then evaluated to paint a better picture of how HCBS waivers change long-term care. / This research combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to triangulate on these phenoamea as a means to investigate when and how HCBS waiver programs facilitate, promote, or stifle the social integration of those with IDD. How does social integration manifest itself in the quality long-term care of those who often cannot take care of themselves? / by Enrique M. Perez. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

In order to improve the quality of care, there is urgent need to involve patients in their own healthcare. So to make patient centered health care system Personal Health Records are proposed as viable solution. This research discusses the importance of a Patient Centric Health Record system. Such systems can empower patients to participate in improving health care quality. It would also provide an economically viable solution to the need for better healthcare without escalating costs by avoiding duplication. The proposed system is Web-based; therefore it has high accessibility and availability. The cloud computing based architecture is used which will allow consumers to address the challenge of sharing medical data. PHR would provide a complete and accurate summary of the health and medical history of an individual by gathering data from many sources. This would make information accessible online to anyone who has the necessary electronic credentials to view the information. / by Vishesh Ved. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

As medical care becomes an increasingly large share of Gross Domestic Product, understanding the mechanisms for how and why medical care spending is rising becomes increasingly important. Such an evaluation should consider the productivity relationship between medical care and health. An evaluation of medical productivity involves the measurement of medical care input prices, disease treatment output prices, and the productive relationship between medical care inputs and disease treatment health outcomes. Medical care price measurement is complicated by the heterogeneity of services, the role of insurance in negotiating prices, rapid technological advancements in medical care and limited availability of transaction price data. Health outcome prices are difficult to construct because of the difficulty in measuring health outcomes, the heterogeneity of health outcomes, and the messy relationship between consumption goods and health. Finally, in addition to accurate input and output price measurement, a productivity assessment requires a measurable causal relationship between medical care services and health outcomes. To date, all of these requirements have been insurmountable hurdles to assessing the productivity of medical care for the entire United States economy. This dissertation uses the Medical care Expenditure Panel Survey to address the necessary requirements for evaluating the productivity of medical care. The second chapter constructs regional medical care price indices using transaction prices that control for service type heterogeneity. The data employed in the analysis associates the observed medical care spending with the diseases the spending is used to treat. This association is exploited in the third chapter, which constructs medical care treatment prices for twelve of the major health conditions in the United States. The fourth chapter compares the productivity of medical care services used to produce disease treatment health outcomes across insurance types. / text

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published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

Introduction South Africa has a two tiered health care system: a private sector catering for seven of the 47 million people and public sector providing care to the majority. The private sector consists of for-profit providers that are funded either through medical schemes, health insurance policies or out of pocket expenditure. To attain the goal of the health care system of improving health, it is essential that healthcare financing is understood. The provision of quality, accurate and comprehensive financial data is necessary for the efficient mobilization and allocation of financial resources. Health Expenditure Reviews and National Health Accounts provide such invaluable information. Aim To provide a trend analysis of health financing and expenditure data for the private health care sector in South Africa from 01 January 2003 to 31 December 2006. Methods This study is employs an observational, descriptive cross-sectional design. The methodology used in the study is adapted from the World Health Organization’s guide to producing National Health Accounts. Data was obtained from the Council for Medical Schemes annual reports and from Statistics South Africa Income and Expenditure Survey. The annual average medical inflation for each of the years was removed from the nominal value so that a real trend analysis could be observed. Results For the four year period, the overall cost-drivers of consolidated schemes were private hospitals (31.0-35.0%), medical specialists (20.0-21.0%), medicines dispensed out of hospital (17.0-22.0%) and non-healthcare expenditure like administration and broker fees (14.0-15.0%). From the households’ consumable expenditure on health, 37.0% was spent on medical services, 35.0% on pharmaceutical products and 11.0% on hospital services. Discussion The majority of expenditure in the private sector is through medical schemes. The precise amount spent by households is unknown due to the lack of data but it is a large amount for the South African household. Proper National Health Account Matrices could not be constructed since access to data was limited, not routinely available and not disaggregated at the required level. Recommendations Better quality information on out-of-pocket household expenditure and expenditure in the traditional sector is needed. To improve access to the private sector, the proposed policy and legislative changes need to be implemented. / Thesis (MMed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

No description available.

Immunisations are one of the most important interventions to decrease mortality and provide a foundation for a successful health system. Eliminating disparities in immunisation access is needed to meet immunisation coverage goals. Although migrants have been identified as influencing recent measles outbreaks in South Africa, research on access to immunisations is lacking for migrants in the country. Numerous barriers to accessing health care have been reported for international migrants in South Africa despite official policies of equal access. Children of Mozambican refugees may be a vulnerable group and not being immunised because of their migration status or other socio-economic and demographic factors. This study aims to determine immunisation rates in rural South Africa and identify socioeconomic and demographic factors influencing immunisation access including being a child of a refugee. All children under 5 years during 2003 and 2006 censuses in the Agincourt subdistrict, Mpumalanga, South Africa (N=17,532) are included in this retrospective, nested cross-sectional multivariate analysis of immunisation access community level data. Immunisation rates are approximately 85% for the first immunisation but rates for subsequent dosing decreased and only 5% of children of appropriate age obtained all immunisations on the South African immunisation schedule. Children of former Mozambican refugees were significantly more likely to be immunised than South African children (OR=1.59, p=0.018) controlling for other socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Children who lived in a village with a clinic (OR=1.43, p=0.015), children with older mothers (OR=1.02, p=0.028), and children in households with higher wealth (OR=1.13, p=0.033) were also more likely to be immunised. Strategies for increasing immunisation access should focus on delivery of services to villages without health care facilities, providing support and outreach to poorer and younger mothers, and ensuring continuing engagement with the immunisation programme. This study adds to the sparse existing research on predictors of immunisation access in South Africa as well as health care access for refugees in South Africa. This research shows that health care access can be higher for international migrants than the host population. Policymakers can use this research to target vulnerable groups to decrease disparities. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 343-380.