In the last decades, the importance of performance management in healthcare organizations has progressively increased. Patient organizations can play a strategic role by providing peer support and education, filling service provision gaps within public healthcare. As experts of their own pathologies, organized patients can aid research and development projects and provide the policymakers with input from the patients' perspectives. Despite these advantages, patient organizations still face criticalities including low political attention at a national and peripheral level, scarce management skills, planning, control, fundraising, and professionalism. Managing Patients' Organizations to Improve Healthcare: Emerging Research and Opportunities delivers emerging research that raises awareness about the contribution of patient organizations in the healthcare process within regulatory authorities, public, and healthcare managers and improves patients' managerial and healthcare professional skills for more efficient and effective processes of care. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as organizational management, patient value, and quality healthcare, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, healthcare administrators, medical practitioners, researchers, academicians, students, and industry professionals seeking current research on public policy management and healthcare management.

In this groundbreaking book, experts show what a difference support systems-family, friends, community and social programs-can make towards the recovery of the millions of people who suffer a traumatic brain injury each year. Health and Healing after Traumatic Brain Injury: Understanding the Power of Family, Friends, Community, and Other Support Systems stresses the importance of an integrated and systems approach to healing. This book offers a unique combination of practitioner perspectives on what works for individual patients, consumer stories and learned insights over time, as well as researcher insights from innovative programs. It provides a holistic account of the important factors in living with a brain injury that will inform and benefit health practitioners and policy makers as well as people with brain injuries and their family members and friends. The chapters explore the current best evidence and contemporary views on healing that draw on optimism, aspirational living, and meaningful partnerships. The authors focus on the emergent area of the salutogenic experience of injury-how brain injury changes and shapes lives in positive ways-and on the variables within individuals and their environments that provide a supportive influence in long-term healing. Presents multiple viewpoints from the perspectives of consumers, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers Advocates an integrated approach to healing after brain injury that incorporates multiple strategies Demonstrates how change and growth are possible after brain injury

This volume contains an Open Access Chapter The Sustainability of Health Care Systems in Europe provides a comprehensive understanding of the sustainability of health systems in Europe. Furthermore, it includes an introduction to how EU action in supporting health- care policies in the EU Member States, looking both at implemented actions and describing current priorities for the future. There has been a rapid evolution of the structure of society and the economy over the last few decades which has created new demands for healthcare services. This has placed pressure on policy makers to ensure the sustainability of the health care sector. Policy makers understand the efficiency of the healthcare delivery system needs to be improved, the shortage of health professionals must be tackled, and that there are growing health inequalities and inequity in access to healthcare. These challenges are exacerbated by recent economic shocks including the 2008 recession, the uncertainty related to Brexit, and the crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, which have impacted the ability of European health systems to finance the health care sector. This book is a must read for researchers and students of health economics and health policy.

This is a homeopathic repertory with a difference. In contrast to the standard repertory structure, this text is formed entirely from clinically confirmed remedies as recommended by some of the world's greatest homeopaths, and constructed into concordance tables for clinically defined conditions. Where they're available, human, animal and in-vitro clinical trials are also used to confirm the remedy selection. With entries for over 3200 individual diseases, this text is the ultimate authority on clinically confirmed homeopathy and is an essential text for any serious prescriber or user of homeopathic medicine.

This open access book introduces the National Health Insurance (NHI) system of Taiwan with a particular emphasis on its application of digital technology to improve healthcare access and quality. The authors explicate how Taiwan integrates its strong Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry with 5G to construct an information system that facilitates medical information exchange, collects data for planning and research, refines medical claims review procedures and even assists in fighting COVID-19. Taiwan's NHI, launched in 1995, is a single-payer system funded primarily through payroll-based premiums. It covers all citizens and foreign residents with the same comprehensive benefits without the long waiting times seen in other single-payer systems. Though premium rate adjustment and various reforms were carried out in 2010, the NHI finds itself at a crossroads over its financial stability. With the advancement of technologies and an aging population, it faces challenges of expanding coverage to newly developed treatments and diagnosis methods and applying the latest innovations to deliver telemedicine and more patient-centered services. The NHI, like the national health systems of other countries, also needs to address the privacy concerns of the personal health data it collects and the issues regarding opening this data for research or commercial use. In this book, the 12 chapters cover the history, characteristics, current status, innovations and future reform plans of the NHI in the digital era. Topics explored include: Income Strategy Payment Structure Pursuing Health Equity Infrastructure of the Medical Information System Innovative Applications of the Medical Information Applications of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Digital Health Care in Taiwan is essential reading for academic researchers and students in healthcare administration, health policy, health systems research, and health services delivery, as well as policymakers and public officials in relevant government departments. It also would appeal to academics, practitioners, and other professionals in public health, health sciences, social welfare, and health and biotechnology law.

Healthcare reform in the United States is a significant, strongly debated issue that has been argued since the early 1900s. Though this issue has been in circulation for decades, by integrating various new models and approaches, a more sustainable national healthcare system can perhaps be realized. Evaluating Challenges and Opportunities for Healthcare Reform presents comprehensive coverage of the development of new models of healthcare systems that seek to create sustainable and optimal healthcare by improving quality and decreasing cost. While highlighting topics including high-value care, patient interaction, and sustainable healthcare, this book is ideally designed for government officials, policymakers, lawmakers, scholars, physicians, healthcare leaders, academicians, practitioners, and students and can be used to help all interested stakeholders to make well-informed decisions related to healthcare reform and policy development for the United States and beyond, as well as to help all individuals and families in their decisions related to choices of optimal healthcare plans.

This volume is unique inits systematic approach to these three pillars of health systems analysis will give readers of various backgrounds authoritative material about subjects adjacent to their own specialties. Assembling such comparative materials is usually an onerous task because so many programs possess their own vocabularies, goals, and methods. This book will provide common grounds for people in programs as diverse as economics and finance, allied health, business and management, and the social sciences, including psychology.

This volume is unique inits systematic approach to these three pillars of health systems analysis will give readers of various backgrounds authoritative material about subjects adjacent to their own specialties. Assembling such comparative materials is usually an onerous task because so many programs possess their own vocabularies, goals, and methods. This book will provide common grounds for people in programs as diverse as economics and finance, allied health, business and management, and the social sciences, including psychology. "

This revealing book tackles the daunting problem of increasing chronic illness in America, offering fresh ideas for the ways in which the challenge can be successfully managed. Remaking Chronic Care in the Age of Health Care Reform: Changes for Lower Cost, Higher Quality Treatment is nothing less than a blueprint for a new mode of chronic care. It depicts a current system in which there is little financial incentive to furnish coordinated services via appropriate primary care and few penalties for failure to deliver such care. Arguing that the current system is unsustainable, the book documents efforts that have been made to promote better coordination of care through patient-centered medical homes and accountable care organizations. Specifically, the book focuses on linking the ongoing innovations in health care practices with the supports for scaling up innovations found in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It shows how expanding and improving primary care as the vehicle for care coordination will reduce costs for those with conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, or other longstanding disorders, but also makes it clear that incentives have to be realigned if such improved primary care is to become a reality. 400 up-to-date references A brief history of the development of patient-centered primary care Qualitative descriptions of what it means to have a chronic illness and how it can be managed in the community Comments from patients about appropriate and inappropriate professional behavior

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

A clear, concise, and essential guide providing key information about cancer survivors and their needs-and how those needs can best be met. Excellent Care for Cancer Survivors: A Guide to Fully Meet Their Needs in Medical Offices and in the Community is edited by the director of the Lance Armstrong Cancer Survivorship Program at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and comprised of articles by experts from that prestigious institution, from the Harvard Medical School, and other leading cancer programs. Its goal is simple: to assure that the millions of cancer survivors in the United States get the help they need to live life to its fullest. This timely work, enriched by conversations with cancer survivors themselves, explains the array of challenges that may affect survivors, from physical needs to psychological, spiritual, sexual, and financial issues. Topics such as nutrition and exercise are also addressed, as are risk assessment, rehabilitation, and possible cognitive dysfunction after chemotherapy. A final section explains the nuts and bolts of starting a professional cancer survivorship program, from staffing to fundraising, exploring what can and is being done to help cancer survivors in different settings achieve optimal health and quality of life. Conversations with cancer survivors explaining the physical and psychological challenges/obstacles they face A listing of current cancer survivorship programs across the United States

This is a resource for professionals involved in determining the driving capacity of individuals with neurological involvement and or trauma. While much work has been completed in this new and growing field, this is the first attempt to bring together clinical work on assessing driving capacity for different clinical populations and conditions. Specific topics include, traumatic brain injury, stroke, dementia, normal aging, medications, retraining, interventions, medical conditions, legal issues, practical issues, assessment instruments, simulators, research and epidemiology. Each chapter will address clinically relevant issues specific to the clinical population. This comprehensive compilation of driving assessment of cognitively compromised populations is the first of its kind and Dr. Schultheis is regarded as a leader in the field.
*The first definitive handbook about driving assessment of cognitively impaired populations, a growing area of research
*Addresses a myriad of clinical populations and conditions such as brain injured and elderly patients
*Written by nationally recognized leaders in their fields of expertise

The six writers in this book explore the contribution and the transferability of narrative inquiry from curriculum studies to daily life in education and in healthcare. They examine the interconnectivity of reconstructed experience with the construction of disciplinary identity and knowledge. Thinking narratively, they write auto/biographically about relationships between teachers, students, nurses, colleagues, and/or people in their care. As narrative inquirers, they are curious how research moves forward professional situations in education and healthcare. The narrative plotlines of knowledge construction, curriculum building and identity formation thread through the chapters. In education and healthcare, the reconstructed experience of a teacher is shown to be foundational to curriculum content and processes. In nursing education, we see congruence between narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, 1999) as a process that includes the teacher-researcher as co-participant; and, theorists, such as Watson (1999), include the nurse in the caring situation as shapers of the experience of people in their care. As practitioner-researchers, teachers in education and healthcare construct who they are and how they are in relationship in the context of social situations. Inquiry, not certainty (Dewey, 1929), is a life stance that is formative for education. Practitioners in education and in healthcare will be interested in this book as a way to make meaning of their experience. Policymakers and administrators will be interested in this book as a way of conceptualizing teachers' knowledge as a source of curriculum. Researchers will be interested in this book as a demonstration of how narrative inquiry illuminates ways of being that are educative and an innovative way to study curriculum.

Our health care system is broken and messy. It is serving neither the patient nor the doctor well. It behooves us, the physicians, to take the lead and diligently try to fix it. --from THE SENSE OF DIRECTION The "invisible hand" will start healing and Adam Smith's "what is good for me" will still be vehemently pursued but not at the expense of others. With a restored sense of direction, it will be easy to not only fix the health care mess but tackle other problems also. --from THE SENSE OF DIRECTION