Recent Medicare legislation seeks to improve patient care quality by financially penalizing providers for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). However, Medicare cannot directly monitor HAI rates, and instead relies on providers accurately self-reporting HAIs in claims to correctly assess...

We investigate the utilisation of primary and secondary public healthcare services and the consequent public costs, using data from the British Understanding Society household panel. We use a sample of 2,314 adults who, at baseline in 2010/11, reported no history of diagnosed long-lasting health...

Limited language proficiency among migrants has been shown to limit migrants from various aspects of everyday life, from the labor market to government services. In the USA, language access laws have been enacted to help provide Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals and households access...

The study presents a general overview of the healthcare facility system of the Slovak Republic, especially in a field of the innovation process of the management information system, with a purpose of analysing the consistency and a unity of the system. The data applied in this analysis is...

Evidence suggests that hospital mergers can reduce costs but less is known about their effects on patient outcomes. We study how a wave of mergers that led to the shutdown of one third of all Swedish maternity wards affected the health of mothers who gave birth and their newborns. Applying a...

This paper examines the behaviour of public hospitals in response to the average payment incentives created by price changes for patients classified in different Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs). Using panel data on public hospitals located within the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, we test...

Over-crowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) generates potential inefficiencies. Using regional administrative data, we investigate the impact of an increase in the accessibility of primary care on ED visits in Italy. We test whether extending practice opening hours up to 12 hours/day reduces...

A common reform used to increase consumer choice and competition in public services has been to allow private providers to compete with public incumbents. However, there remains a concern that not all consumers are able to benefit equally from wider choice. We consider the case of publicly...

Understanding socioeconomic inequalities in health care is critical for achieving health equity. The aim of this paper is threefold: 1) to quantify inequality in diabetes health care service utilization; 2) to understand determinants of these inequalities in relation to socio-demographic and...