EU Health Systems and Distributive Justice uses theories of distributive justice to examine tensions created by the application of the Internal Market rules to the provision of health care services within the European Union. Using the concepts and principles embedded in the theories of egalitarianism and libertarianism, this book analyses the impact of the Internal Market rules on common values and principles shared by European health systems, such as universality, accessibility, equity and solidarity. This analysis is conducted using the specific issue of cross-border health care. This book makes innovative contributions to the study of the relationship between EU health systems and the Internal Market - it encompasses the analysis of all principles recognised by EU institutions as guiding principles of European health systems; it integrates human rights law and practice into the discussion of the EU Court of Justice's approach to patient mobility cases; and it assesses the potential impact of the Internal Market over EU health systems through the lens of distributive justice, looking at the underlying principles of these systems that are mostly concerned with social justice. Ultimately, this is not a book on EU law and health care, but it is a book on distributive justice, health care and the principles and policies guiding European health systems.

This book empirically examines health care financing reforms and popular responses in three major cities in East Asia: Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It adopts a new revised version of the theory of historical institutionalism to compare and explain the divergent reform paths in these three places over the past three decades. It also examines forces that propel institutional change. The book provides three detailed case studies on the development of health care financing reforms and the politics of implementing them. It shows that health care systems in Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong were the products of Western presence in the nineteenth century. It illustrates how greater attention is paid to the roles played by ideas, actors, and environmental triggers without abandoning the core assumptions that political institutions and policy feedback remain central to impact health care financing reforms. It shows that health care financing reform is shaped by a complex interplay of forces over time. It also provides the most updated material about health care financing reforms in Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The central argument of this book is that health care financing reform is both an evolving process responding to changing circumstances and a political process revealing an intricate interplay of power relationships and diverse interests. It shows that institutional changes in health care financing system can be incremental but transformative in nature. It argues that social policies will continue to develop and welfare states will continue to adapt and evolve in order to cope with new risks and needs. This book sheds new lights on understanding the politics of health care financing reform and sources and modes of institutional change.

The debate about health care reform has gone on for many years. The debate has generated often innovative ideas for reform that transcend national boundaries. For example, proposals have been made for an extension of health insurance with a framework of social protection; progressive development of funding methods; controls on expenditure; bringing benefits into line with what is actually needed; and the application of technological advances.

The book concentrates on health insurance policy innovations in selected countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. In addition this book addresses recent institutional economic findings with regard to application of information technology in health insurance systems. Topics discussed include: new approaches in extending coverage in a health insurance system, confronting resource scarcity: innovative strategies, refining benefits to meet current needs, new institutional and administrative frameworks, and transformation through information technology systems. Many of the innovations presented here have already been integrated into existing reforms and the authors refer to concrete developments in individual countries and regions.

This book presents those important innovations to social health insurance systems in industrialized and developing countries that have been brought forward in recent years and, as far as possible, already evaluated. In doing so, the intention is to show developments that are valid for more than one country and could have long term impact on health insurance systems. This book is intended to promote deeper exchanges of experience between differing regions, countries, and health insurance systems. In this way itwill stimulate ideas for politicians and practitioners, scientists and other experts.

This book provides a comparative and accessible analysis of key areas of healthcare law, comparing English law with selected common and civil law jurisdictions within a framework of law and medical ethics, and encompassing pivotal cases, codes and legislation. The introduction examines medical decision making, and legal and ethical frameworks in Western and non-Western cultures. Part I examines healthcare law in England and Wales, including abortion, consent, confidentiality, children, euthanasia, persistent vegetative state patients, organ transplantation, sterilisation of the mentally incapacitated, surrogacy, UK cloning proposals and the landmark conjoined twins case. Part II covers non-English common law jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and certain American jurisdictions. Civil law examples focus on France and Germany, and, where appropriate, Scandinavian countries. International perspectives on abortion laws and euthanasia are also provided. The book concludes with a comparative overview, which highlights common healthcare themes across various jurisdictions. Comparative Healthcare Law brings together information never previously accessible within the covers of one volume, making this unique book indispensable for scholars and practitioners in the field of healthcare law.

This book comes out of an in-depth, qualitative study of the experiences of twenty-three families in which one parent was dying of cancer. The study attempted to better understand the impact of terminal illness on the entire family system and sought to develop a theoretical framework that would guide the assessment of and services to such families. As a result of interviews with patients, spouses and their adult children over three phases of the study, the process of ""fading away"" was identified and conceptualized in terms of various phases which contributed to this process. The book is not a research report but rather presents more generally the ideas that developed from the study, with two purposes: to increase the reader's understanding of particular experiences that families encounter when dealing with terminal illness, specifically cancer. The intended readership also includes families themselves: to propose guidelines for care to be considered by practitioners working with such families.

The complex, highly problematic, often thorny dynamics of trust and authority are central to the anthropological study of legitimacy. In this book, this sine qua non runs across the in-depth examination of the ways in which healthcare and public health are managed by the authorities and experienced by the people on the ground in urban Europe, the USA, India, Africa, Latin America and the Far and Middle East. This book brings comparatively together anthropological studies on healthcare and public health rigorously based on in-depth empirical knowledge. Inspired by the current debate on legitimacy, legitimation and de-legitimation, the contributions do not refrain from taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health systems under study, but carefully avoid letting this issue monopolise the discussion. This book raises key challenges to our understanding of healthcare practices and the governance of public health. With a keen eye on urban life, its inequalities and the ever-expanding gap between rulers and the ruled, the findings address important questions on the complex ways in which authorities gain, keep, or lose the public’s trust.

Opening with a useful overview of the literature on user involvement, the book goes on to look at the policy and professional context within which user involvement is undertaken, in particular user involvement in palliative care. In this section, the authors discuss two key concepts - palliative care and empowerment - and analyse the role of self-help groups and new information and communication technologies in this context. The last section of the book focuses on the detailed narratives of people coping with three life-threatening illnesses - cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease - and in this way the views and experiences of the 'user' are brought into play to critique current policy and practice
Too Ill to Talk? addresses a current health services issue in a refreshingly critical manner. It challenges the assumption that user involvement is either easy to achieve or that it is necessarily welcomed by all parties. It will be valuable reading for students on health studies courses, health professionals and policy makers in health and social care.

This book enumerates the purpose of clinical audit, the continuing value of clinical audit in a changing world of healthcare, and key issues and the key principles of audit practice. It sets out the core practical methodology of clinical audit, making clear how to conduct an audit project.

Harrison and Prentice aim to provide a source of reference and reflection for those who are concerned with the planning of hospitals themselves or who are concerned with the health care delivery system as a whole. The authors set out a detailed framework for analyzing hospital services in relation to other providers, based on clinical quality, costs of provision, and access. The book also contains a series of recommendations for action.

Topical and controversial The Tyranny of Health exposes the dangers of the explosion of health awareness for both patients and doctors, using straightforward language to explain the latest health statistics and and research findings. Michael Fitzpatrick, a full-time inner-city GP, argues from his day-to-day experience in the surgery that health propaganda is having a very unhealthy effect on the nation. Patients are made unnecessarily anxious as a result of health scares which have greatly exaggerated the risks of everyday activities such as eating beef, sunbathing and having sex. Doctors no longer seem content with treating disease but are encouraged by the government to tell people how to live more and more aspects of their lives.
Michael Fitzpatrick concludes that doctors should stop trying to make people virtuous. He argues that we need to establish a clear boundary between the worlds of medicine and politics, so that doctors can concentrate on treating the sick - and leave the well alone.

This book is devoted to building up the case that the drug industry has systematically corrupted science to play up the benefits and play down the harms of their drugs. It describes the activities of the drug industry to organised crime.

Topical and controversial The Tyranny of Health exposes the dangers of the explosion of health awareness for both patients and doctors, using straightforward language to explain the latest health statistics and and research findings. Michael Fitzpatrick, a full-time inner-city GP, argues from his day-to-day experience in the surgery that health propaganda is having a very unhealthy effect on the nation. Patients are made unnecessarily anxious as a result of health scares which have greatly exaggerated the risks of everyday activities such as eating beef, sunbathing and having sex. Doctors no longer seem content with treating disease but are encouraged by the government to tell people how to live more and more aspects of their lives.
Michael Fitzpatrick concludes that doctors should stop trying to make people virtuous. He argues that we need to establish a clear boundry between the worlds of medicine and politics, so that doctors can concentrate on treating the sick - and leave the well alone.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203129261

The emergence of a global economy has led to the erosion of local autonomy and national sovereignty with an associated emphasis on the spread of liberal, free-market economics. A clear divide is appearing between those benefiting from and those disadvantaged by this process. Among the most important consequences are changes in the patterns of health and the prevalence of disease. While infant mortality is declining in most countries, and many formerly prevalent diseases are being successfully tackled, the move from subsistence to cash economies brings with it changes in diet, alcohol consumption and high levels of smoking; with the result that non-communicable, 'lifestyle illnesses' such as heart disease and diabetes are spreading rapidly. Similarly, growing divisions of wealth add to the problem, bringing diseases relating to poverty and malnourishment as well as those caused by affluence and over-consumption. Issues covered in this book include equitable and sustainable modernization, the determinants of health, the process of marginalization, and survival strategies on the periphery. The authors draw on primary case study material, largely from societies in the Pacific region undergoing modernization, to provide invaluable information for tracking and assessing the full impacts of these changes.

This next volume in Research in the Sociology of Health Care covers a variety of important social factors and their relationship to health and health care inequities both in the United States and the rest of the world. The authors of this volume explore issues related to infectious diseases and various chronic health problems. One section focuses on Covid 19 and issues of kidney disease, face masks and social values, pandemic experiences in rural parts of the United States, and in urban India. Other topics that are discussed focus on issues outside the United States such as in Nepal, Ecuador, and broader cross-national comparisons. Several papers focus on health care system issues within the United States including micro hospitals in Texas, evidence-based medicine, and trends in health disparities in the Latina population in the United States. Written from a sociological and broader social science approach, the papers provide important information both about broad trends in the US and other countries and some specific considerations of issues from a social perspective as linked to Covid 19.

There is a wealth of health information on the internet. Today's students of health studies and all health care professionals must be able to use this valuable resource and extract from it what is most relevant and useful. In order for them to do this purposefully and skilfully, they need to have a thorough understanding of how the system works and have the ability to navigate their way around it with ease.
The Essential Guide to the Internet for Health Professionals is a superb photocopiable resource for lecturers. It shows students:
*how to get online
*how to navigate the worldwide web
*how to find health information on the internet
*how to communicate with other health professionals
*how to access free health and medical resources
*how to publish on the web
*how to use online help with health studies assignments
*how to search for jobs
Each chapter contains easy-to-follow activities and photocopiable worksheets.

eBook available with sample pages: EB:0203465644

Beginning with the origins of Western medicine and science in Egypt, Greece, and Rome the authors explore the relationship between race, medicine, and health care. An American Health Dilemma offers an extensive examination of the history of intellectual and scientific racism that evolved to give sanction to the mistreatment, medical abuse, and neglect of African Americans and other non-White people.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203904109

Without a governance structure, IT at many hospitals and healthcare systems is a haphazard endeavor that typically results in late, over-budget projects and, ultimately, disparate systems. IT Governance in Hospitals and Health Systems offers a practical "how to" in creating an information technology governance process that ensures the IT projects supporting a hospital or health systems' strategy are completed on-time and on-budget. The authors define and describe IT governance as it is currently practiced in leading healthcare organizations, providing step-by-step guidance of the process to readers can replicate these best practices at their own hospital or health system. The book provides an overview of what IT governance is and why it is important to healthcare organizations. In addition, the book examines keys to IT governance success, as well as common mistakes to avoid; governance processes, workflows and project management; and the important roles that staff, a board of directors and committees play. Special features in the book include case studies from hospitals and health systems that have successfully developed an effective IT governance structure for their organization.

This book is a collection of original essays on the meaning of providing care. These essays address not only the work of caring for the elderly, but also the work of caring for children, the infirm and those with disabilities.
The essays approach the topic from an ethical standpoint and also from a more practical, feminist and sociological point of view. The main goal of this book is to re-conceive the notion of care work, beginning with steps as simple as replacing the phrase 'caregiver' with the phrase 'care worker'.

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, The Dying Process draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death.
Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examines the non-negotiable effects of a patient's bodily deterioration on their sense of self and, in so doing, offers a powerful new perspective in embodiment and emotion in death and dying.
A detailed and subtle ethnographic study, The Dying Process engages with a range of deeply complex and ethically contentious issues surrounding the care of dying patients in hospices and elsewhere.

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, The Dying Process draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death.
Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examines the non-negotiable effects of a patient's bodily deterioration on their sense of self and, in so doing, offers a powerful new perspective in embodiment and emotion in death and dying.
A detailed and subtle ethnographic study, The Dying Process engages with a range of deeply complex and ethically contentious issues surrounding the care of dying patients in hospices and elsewhere.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203130278

This work analyzes the contribution made by the UKCC to the development of the nursing profession in this country since the 1970s. It details the key issues the council grappled with during this time and provides in-depth analyses of the complexity of these issues. There is a general consensus that the current view of nursing's regulatory body will culminate in a major shake up of the way the nursing profession is governed and in which the UKCC will be radically transformed. This publication of the history of the UKCC marks the close of a very significant period in nursing's history and the opening of wider debates about ensuring the safety of the public through regulation of health professionals. This is a significant text for all those who teach on professional and policy issues in nursing.

Including an array of distinguished contributors, this novel book fills a gap in the literature by addressing an important yet under researched issue in the field of sports economics. It places great emphasis on the notion that sport is a significant component for improving the happiness, health and well-being of citizens, communities and society as a whole. In so doing, it addresses whether, in an environment of increasing pressure on public spending, governments should continue to subsidise sporting activities at the expense of other public resources. Written in a clear and accessible style, this pioneering book explores a number of specific issues including: -the relationship between sport and happiness -the effect of sport on health, including the capacity of sport and exercise to reduce spending on medical expenses -the relationship between sport and productivity -whether sport as a leisure activity can improve quality of life. Innovative and original, this volume will strongly appeal to students and researchers of sport, health and welfare economics. Contributors include: C. Breuer, C. Cabane, M. Davis, P. Downward, C. End, D. Forrest, J. Garcia Villar, H. Huang, B. Humphreys, G. Kavetsos, M. Lechner, J. Leyva, I. McHale, S. Oreffice, T. Pawlowski, J. Price, C. Quintana-Domeque, S. Rasciute, J. Ruseski, N. Sari, D.H. Simon

Capacity building - which focuses on understanding the obstacles that prevent organisations from realising their goals, while promoting those features that help them to achieve measurable and sustainable results - is vital to improve the delivery of health care in both developed and developing countries. Organisations are important structural building blocks of health systems because they provide platforms for delivery of curative and preventive health services, and facilitate health workforce financing and functions. Organisational capacity building involves more than training and equipment and this book discusses management capacity to restructure systems, structures and roles strategically to optimise organisational performance in healthcare. Examining the topic in a practical and comprehensive way, Organisational Capacity Building in Health Systems is divided into five parts, looking at: What health organisations are and do Management and leadership in health organisations How to build capacity in health systems Building capacity in a range of health system contexts Dealing with challenges in building capacity and evaluating work Looking at how to effectively design, implement and evaluate organisational capacity building initiatives, this book is ideal for public health, health promotion and health management researchers, students and practitioners.