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The level of mother’s health knowledge influences not only her health, but also significantly predicts her children’s health and medical care, and spending on medical care. This relationship has not yet been empirically assessed in India. The purpose of this paper is to measure the level of health knowledge of mothers in India and its association with the short-term illness in their children, medical care and medical care expenditure.

The authors used data from India Human Development Survey, 2004-2005. An index of “health knowledge” was constructed by using factor analysis. Multivariate binary logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression and multiple classification analysis were employed to analyze the relationship between mother’s health knowledge and child illness. Pearson’s χ2 test and ANOVA test were used to estimate levels of statistical significance in bivariate analyses.

The results revealed that children of mothers with medium and high-health knowledge were significantly less likely to have short-term illness (OR=0.390, p < 0.01 and OR=0.543, p < 0.01) than those children whose mothers had no or low-health knowledge (OR=1.00, p < 0.01) cutting across all background characteristics. Similarly, the attainment of modern medical care for short-term illness of children was nearly two times greater (OR=1.97, p < 0.05) in mothers with higher health knowledge as compared to mothers with no or low-health knowledge (OR=1.00, p < 0.01). The results also showed that mothers with higher health knowledge spent more on medical care for their children’s short-term illness than mothers with no and low-health knowledge.

The findings suggested a significant effect of mother’s health knowledge on the prevalence of short-term illness among their children, medical care and expenditure on the medical care. Appropriate health knowledge for women is crucial to the wellbeing of their children. Besides, social equity in terms of the distribution of facilities, to gain health knowledge and medical care, are essential to be established in India.

To the knowledge, this study is the first attempt to measure the health knowledge of women in reproductive age and its association with the prevalence of short-term illness, medical care and medical expenditure of their children in India. In general, a health knowledge index could be a significant composite predictor of the health in a population.

This study establishes a risk management system for medical and health care integration projects to address the problem of high-risk potential and a strong correlation between risk factors.

A new fuzzy WINGS-G1 model for identifying key risk factors in medical and health care integration projects is proposed by introducing the fuzzy theory and the concept of risk incidence into the Weighted Influence Non-linear Gauge System (WINGS) method.

The authors analyze the fluidity of project risk factors through complex networks to control direct risks and cut off risk transmission paths to provide a reference for risk control and prevention of medical and health care integration projects.

(1) The integration of fuzzy theory into the WINGS method solves the problem of strong subjectivity of expert scoring in the traditional WINGS method; (2) By the different probabilities of risk factors, the concept of risk incidence is introduced in the WINGS model, which is more conducive to the identification of the critical risk factors and the rational allocation and utilization of organizational resources; (3) The use of the complex network for risk interactivity analysis fully reflects the dynamic nature of risk factors in medical and health care integration projects.

This study aims to develop a framework for the management of medical records in support of health-care service delivery in the hospitals in the Limpopo province of South Africa.

The study was predominantly quantitative and has used the questionnaires, system analysis, document analysis and observation to collect data in 40 hospitals of Limpopo province. The sample of 49 per cent (306) records management officials were drawn out of 622 (100 per cent) total population. The response rate was 71 per cent (217) out of the entire sample.

The study discovered that a framework for management of medical records in the public hospitals is not in place because of several reasons and further demonstrates that public health-care institutions need an integrative framework for the proper management of medical records of all forms and in all media.

The study develops and suggests a framework to embed medical records management into the health-care service delivery workflow for effective records management and ease of access. It is hoped that such a framework will help hospitals in South Africa and elsewhere to improve their medical records management to support health-care service provision.

An analysis of community health, its history, successes and failures, depends on an understanding of its scope, but there is little consensus as to precisely what the discipline entails. Some view it as a strict scientific discipline, others see it as a social movement, and still others conceive of it as a conglomerate of various disciplines. It is useful initially to identify the medical components of community health, and then to approach its interdisciplinary aspects. Community health, strictly defined, includes such fields as disease control, environmental sanitation, maternal and child care, dental health, nutrition, school health, geriatrics, occupational health, and the treatment of drug and alcohol abuse. This limited definition, though accurate, does not differentiate the field from the much older area of public health. Within community health, the disease focus of traditional public health epidemiology, the total health focus of community medicine, and the outcome focus of health services research are interconnected. Community health combines the public health concern for health issues of defined populations with the preventive therapeutic approach of clinical medicine. An emphasis on personal health care is the result of this combination. Robert Kane describes the field accurately and succinctly: “We envision community medicine as a general organizational framework which draws upon a number of disciplines for its tools. In this sense, it is an applied discipline which adopts the knowledge and skills of other areas in its effort to solve community health problems. The tools described here include community diagnosis (which draws upon such diverse fields as sociology, political science, economics, biostatistics, and epidemiology), epidemiology itself, and health services research (the application of epidemiologic techniques on analyzing the effects of medical care on health).”

This paper explores the health rights of prisoners as defined in international law, and the mechanisms that have been used to ensure the rights of persons in detention to realise the highest attainable standard of health. It examines this right as articulated within United Nations and regional human rights treaties, non‐binding or so‐called soft law instruments from international organisations and the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies. It explores the use of economic, social and cultural rights mechanisms, and those within civil and political rights, as they engage the right to health of prisoners, and identifies the minimum legal obligations of governments in order to remain compliant with human rights norms as defined within the international case law. In addressing these issues, this article adopts a holistic approach to the definition of the highest attainable standard of health. This includes a consideration of adequate standards of general medical care, including preventative health and mental health services. It also examines the question of environmental health, and those poor conditions of detention that may exacerbate health decline, disease transmission, mental illness or death. The paper examines the approach to prison health of the United Nations human rights system and its various monitoring bodies, as well as the regional human rights systems in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Based upon this analysis, the paper draws conclusions on the current fulfilment of the right to health of prisoners on an international scale, and proposes expanded mechanisms under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment to monitor and promote the health rights of prisoners at the international and domestic levels.

Poor quality of services in the health-care sector of the developing countries like Bangladesh forces affluent patients to seek advanced medical treatment from abroad. The purpose of this study is to explore the outbound medical tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty on the basis of the quality of the health-care service provided by foreign medical institutions.

The medical tourists from Bangladesh who have got medical services from Indian medical institutions were taken as a sample by applying a purposive sampling technique. For the measurement of outbound medical tourists’ satisfaction, the dimensions of the HEALTHQUAL model were adopted. A self-administrated questionnaire was the major tool for collecting data from the respondents. Using partial least square-structural equation model multivariate statistical technique and with the aid of SmartPLS software, primary data collected from 218 final respondents were analyzed.

The findings of this study reveal that four dimensions of the HEALTHQUAL model, namely, empathy, tangibility, efficiency, and safety have a significant positive impact on building medical tourists’ overall satisfaction, and then the overall satisfaction also has a positive level of significance on building loyalty towards foreign medical service providers.

The findings of this study can be a helpful instrument for the developing countries to rethink and reshuffle their own existing health-care system for providing quality medical services and at the same time, the medical tourists importing countries to sharpen their existing service quality as well as to attract more medical tourists in the future.

A handful of research has been carried out, especially focused on health-care service quality measurement and the relationship of health-care service quality with satisfaction and loyalty from the perspective of developing countries outbound medical tourists. Thus, this research work will give a flavor to think of health-care service quality in a different dimension.

The health care crisis in the United States has roots that reach into the nineteenth century. An examination of the cultural, social, and economic roots should warn against piecemeal and short‐range measures to correct a fragmented system which, despite all its achievements, is draining the economy while it fails to meet the needs of millions. Unlike the Western European experience, it began as a loosely organized and loosely co‐ordinated system, responding as it grew to the forces of change: research from Europe, technological advances, corporate interests, the need for a healthier labour force, and the economic stimuli of the marketplace. Throughout the centuries, the delivery of medical care was seen in the terms of the buying and selling of a commodity. Professional and corporate groups are interested in keeping it essentially as it is by emphasizing its accomplishments and predicting setbacks of all kinds if drastic change is made. Argues that if the reformers in and out of government do not recognize the roots of the problems and the pivotal points requiring radical surgery, they will be unsuccessful in bringing about a more comprehensive and efficient health care system. A final lesson of history is that health care is a much broader reality than medical care. The health of the people depends largely on the improvement of the social and natural environment.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, it analyzes demand and supply-side factors that influence patient flows to and from Austria. Second, building on the empirical research and existing conceptualizations, the study offers a general extended framework to guide future comparative analysis.

The paper draws on multiple data sources including a literature review, secondary data, website analysis and semi-structured interviews with patients and health providers. Content analysis was carried out to identify common motives for seeking care abroad and providers' orientation towards medical travel.

Outbound medical travel is largely determined by factors of access, affordability and vicinity, while inbound medical travel is predominately driven by a lack of adequate medical infrastructure in source countries and quality, both in terms of medical and service quality. Providers distinguish themselves according to the extent they take part in medical travel.

The findings emerging from a single country case study approach cannot be generalized across settings and contexts, albeit contributing to a better understanding of current medical travel patterns in Europe.

Unlike most recent contributions, this study focuses both on inbound and outbound medical travel in Austria and investigates patient flows for distinctive treatments and drivers. While analysis of the supply-side of medical travel is often limited to tourism studies, this study provides a critical insight into developments in Europe from a health policy perspective, acknowledging that diverse medical travel patterns in Europe coexist.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative, interdisciplinary teaching of health, health care and medical care based on three pillars: social economics, the social determinants of health (SDH) and ethics. Based on these three pillars, the global financial crisis is presented as the moment of manifestation of the SDH at individual and aggregate levels that require a critical analysis from a broader perspective that is possible with social economics and ethics.

The author designed a writing-intensive course based on four modules about definition of health, health care, medical care and determinants of health; political economy of financing and organization of medical care; policies including reform proposals; and medical ethics and moral philosophies that reflect back on the previous topics, respectively.

The course attracts students from different disciplines who found it realistic and comprehensive so that it can be related easily to other disciplines owing to its interdisciplinary design. It also helps students to improve their writing skills.

The course is taught only in US context and is still open to further development.

The theoretical pillars of the course can be adopted and experimented with in different contexts (e.g. wars, plagues, immigration, etc.) and inform the participants about the subject matters from a broader perspective.

This paper provides a successful and novel teaching experience of health and medical care by putting social economics, SDH and ethics together.

The purpose of this paper is to outline and discuss the opportunities and challenges of using social media in medical and health care.

The paper is predicated on practical rationality and adopts a commentary approach from a professional standpoint that is supported by informed findings from the extant literature and publicly accessible sources of information (e.g. daily news and governmental reports) to deliver the objective of this paper.

The paper presents three prospects that social media can offer to medical and health care practices, namely, enhancement in participatory medicine, quality of care, and emergency management and preparedness. Several challenges and risks of social media use in medical and health care are also put forth, including defamation, privacy, accuracy of information, and blurring of professional boundaries.

The identified benefits should propel an increase in social media adoption to improve the delivery of medical and health care while the highlighted pitfalls can help practitioners to avoid inappropriate use of social media in medical and health care.