In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.
The idea of person-centred health systems is widely advocated in political and policy declarations to better address health system challenges. A person-centred approach is advocated on political, ethical and instrumental grounds and believed to benefit service users, health professionals and the health system more broadly. However, there is continuing debate about the strategies that are available and effective to promote and implement 'person-centred' approaches. This book brings together the world's leading experts in the field to present the evidence base and analyse current challenges and issues. It examines 'person-centredness' from the different roles people take in health systems, as individual service users, care managers, taxpayers or active citizens. The evidence presented will not only provide invaluable policy advice to practitioners and policymakers working on the design and implementation of person-centred health systems but will also be an excellent resource for academics and graduate students researching health systems in Europe. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.
The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.
The Health Care Policy Process enables the reader to develop a clear understanding of the scope and objectives of health policy studies, to analyze the extent to which policies can be changed or influenced by those involved at the different stages of the policy process, and to assess both the need and the scope for change. The author considers the relationship between planning and policy, looks at key concepts in analyzing health care issues, and examines some of the debates overshadowing today's health policy agenda.
In this book the authors explore the state of the art on efficiency measurement in health systems and international experts offer insights into the pitfalls and potential associated with various measurement techniques. The authors show that: - The core idea of efficiency is easy to understand in principle - maximizing valued outputs relative to inputs, but is often difficult to make operational in real-life situations - There have been numerous advances in data collection and availability, as well as innovative methodological approaches that give valuable insights into how efficiently health care is delivered - Our simple analytical framework can facilitate the development and interpretation of efficiency indicators.
This edited volume captures and communicates the best thinking on how to improve healthcare by improving the delivery of services -- providing care when and where it is needed most -- through application of state-of-the-art scheduling systems. Over 12 chapters, the authors cover aspects of setting appointments, allocating healthcare resources, and planning to ensure that capacity matches needs for care. A central theme of the book is increasing healthcare efficiency so that both the cost of care is reduced and more patients have access to care. This can be accomplished through reduction of idle time, lessening the time needed to provide services and matching resources to the needs where they can have the greatest possible impact on health. Within their chapters, authors address: (1) Use of scheduling to improve healthcare efficiency. (2) Objectives, constraints and mathematical formulations. (3) Key methods and techniques for creating schedules. (4) Recent developments that improve the available problem solving methods. (5) Actual applications, demonstrating how the methods can be used. (6) Future directions in which the field of research is heading. Collectively, the chapters provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of models and methods for scheduling the delivery of patient care for all parts of the healthcare system. Chapter topics include setting appointments for ambulatory care and outpatient procedures, surgical scheduling, nurse scheduling, bed management and allocation, medical supply logistics and routing and scheduling for home healthcare.
"This book explores the development and management of health systems and organizations in relation to individuals aged 65 and over"--Provided by publisher.