1,720,956 research outputs found
An Assessment on the Effect of Capitation on Cost and Utilization of Health Services: A Case of The National Health Insurance Authority of Ghana
Get PDFIt is common knowledge that responsiveness towards healthcare utilization, cost of service delivery in terms of cost containment may be influenced by the method of reimbursing service providers. Most often it has the hypothesis is that, capitation form of reimbursement reduces cost of drugs and services, checks over prescription, unnecessarily referral which in the long run leads to over utilization of services. The aforementioned, if left unchecked culminates in escalating cost of health care. To assess the impact of capitation as a provider payment method in the operations of the National Health Insurance Authority of Ghana. We use data categorized under two main groups; the capitated group and the non-capitated group to examine the impact of the capitation policy on health service utilization and expenditure in the outpatient department. The study employed difference-in-difference approach in analyzing the difference in the trends before and after the introduction of the capitation policy. Multiple linear regression model was used to estimate effects on cost per member and utilization per member between the two groups and the two periods.
Findings from the study reveals that, there was a general decline in the in OPD cost per member and OPD utilization per member at result of the capitation policy. Evidence from the study indicates that enrollees in the Ashanti region which represent the capitated group significantly consumed less health services per member by 1.793 units as compared to the Brong-Ahafo region (non-capitated group). Although the capitation coefficient on OPD cost per member indicated a decline, evidence from the results shows that the decline was not statistically significant. In conclusion, there was a considerable evidence to reject the claim that there is statistically significant difference between OPD utilization per member between the capitated and the noncapitated group before and after the introduction of the capitation policy. In contrast to the study hypothesis, it failed to reject the null hypothesis that trend between the two groups within the two period has no different effect on the cost of services per member because of the capitation policy. Access to data and the use of data on cost which was not adjusted for inflation were the limitations that challenged the study
An Assessment on the Effect of Capitation on Cost and Utilization of Health Services: A Case of The National Health Insurance Authority of Ghana
No full textIt is common knowledge that responsiveness towards healthcare utilization, cost of service delivery in terms of cost containment may be influenced by the method of reimbursing service providers. Most often it has the hypothesis is that, capitation form of reimbursement reduces cost of drugs and services, checks over prescription, unnecessarily referral which in the long run leads to over utilization of services. The aforementioned, if left unchecked culminates in escalating cost of health care. To assess the impact of capitation as a provider payment method in the operations of the National Health Insurance Authority of Ghana. We use data categorized under two main groups; the capitated group and the non-capitated group to examine the impact of the capitation policy on health service utilization and expenditure in the outpatient department. The study employed difference-in-difference approach in analyzing the difference in the trends before and after the introduction of the capitation policy. Multiple linear regression model was used to estimate effects on cost per member and utilization per member between the two groups and the two periods.
Findings from the study reveals that, there was a general decline in the in OPD cost per member and OPD utilization per member at result of the capitation policy. Evidence from the study indicates that enrollees in the Ashanti region which represent the capitated group significantly consumed less health services per member by 1.793 units as compared to the Brong-Ahafo region (non-capitated group). Although the capitation coefficient on OPD cost per member indicated a decline, evidence from the results shows that the decline was not statistically significant. In conclusion, there was a considerable evidence to reject the claim that there is statistically significant difference between OPD utilization per member between the capitated and the noncapitated group before and after the introduction of the capitation policy. In contrast to the study hypothesis, it failed to reject the null hypothesis that trend between the two groups within the two period has no different effect on the cost of services per member because of the capitation policy. Access to data and the use of data on cost which was not adjusted for inflation were the limitations that challenged the study
The Post-2015 Development Agenda: Progress Towards Sustainable Development Goal Target On Maternal Mortality And Child Mortality In Limited Resource Settings With mHealth Interventions: A Systematic Review In Sub-Saharan Africa And Southern Asia
Get PDFIn resource-constrained areas, mostly the low-income countries, mortality rates continue to remain higher than in high-income countries in spite of the ongoing efforts to make progress and improve maternal and child health. During the fifteen-year period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we witnessed a significant decline in child and maternal mortality rates despite their inability to harness the 75% reduction in maternal mortality and to reduce the under-five mortality by two-thirds as stipulated in the MDG5 and MDG4 respectively. Another fifteen-year plan was necessitated to achieve these targets by 2030, as captured in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3. Prior to the introduction of the MDGs in the year 2000, the annual rate of maternal mortality reduction was 1.2%, which significantly rose to 3% in the MDG era. To achieve the global goal in 2030 will require at least a 7.5% annual reduction between 2016 and 2030.
Health interventions delivered through mobile technologies have been implemented in low-income countries to address the challenges in maternal and child health by supporting pregnant women, mothers and health workers behavior and introducing decision support functionalities.
The rational for this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature to ascertain the progress made by mHealth interventions toward SDGs 3.1 and 3.2 in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, where the global burden of maternal and child mortality is high. The primary outcomes of interests were maternal mortality and under-five / neonatal mortality. Secondary outcomes were increasing coverage and utilization of antenatal care (ANC), postnatal care (PNC), skilled birth attendance/ facility delivery and childhood immunizations through behavior change.
Thirty-six quantitative full-text articles were reviewed, 19 of which met the inclusion criteria. Most studies used SMS or voice message reminders to influence patient behavior change and were conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa. All studies showed at least some evidence that mHealth contributed to support behavior change of participants and training of health workers and to improve antenatal care attendance, postnatal care attendance, childhood immunization coverage/ rates and skilled delivery attendance.
The findings from this review show that mHealth interventions implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia can support the global effort towards SDG 3.1 and 3.2 to improve neonatal and maternal deaths. More good-quality studies addressing the role of mHealth in reducing maternal and child health outcomes are needed, especially in Southern Asi
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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