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Although the quality of health-care infrastructure and equipment influences patient’s overall health-care experience, health-care infrastructure and equipment are not always managed and maintained with the attention required. This is due mainly to the complexity of health-care infrastructure and equipment and shortage of maintenance budget. This study aims to determine if patient’s satisfaction of core health-care business is mediated by the quality of health-care infrastructure and equipment.

This cross-sectional study comprises 622 adult patients at the Physician OPD and Polyclinic of Komfo Anokye Teaching hospital, Tamale Teaching hospital and Cape Coast Teaching hospital in Ghana. Structural equation model Smart PLS was used to analyse the data.

The study results showed that the quality of health-care infrastructure and equipment has a positive significant influence (mediation) on the relationship between health-care delivery and patient’s satisfaction as well as the relationship between adequacy of health-care resources and patient’s satisfaction. However, it was shown not to have a positive significant influence (mediation) on the relationship between quality of health-care personnel and patients’ satisfaction as well as health-care administrative process and patient’s satisfaction.

First, the study findings are centred on cross-sectional data, which capture the opinion of the patients at a specific time period instead of over a period of time. Consequently, in future, though difficult to achieve, a longitudinal study can be piloted to provide more insight. Second, the data was collected from only one country (Ghana); thus, the ability to generalise the results may be a challenge.

The implication of this study is that there is the need to prudently maintain hospital infrastructure and equipment in good working condition as it has a positive effect on patients’ satisfaction of their overall health-care experience.

Most studies have concentrated on patient’s health-care experience. This study extends the knowledge of patient’s health-care experience by determining the mediating role of quality of health-care infrastructure and equipment on the relationship between patient’s satisfaction and core health-care business. There are limited studies of such nature in Ghana. Therefore, this study will provide invaluable empirical data for the health-care sector of a developing African country.

This article investigates the dynamic implication of healthcare expenditure on economic growth in the selected ten Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2018.

The study methodology included dynamic heterogenous panel, using mean group and pooled mean group estimators. The investigation of the healthcare expenditure and economic growth nexus was achieved while controlling the effects of investment, savings, labor force and life expectancy via interaction terms.

The results from linear healthcare expenditure have a significant positive impact on economic growth, while the nonlinear estimates through the interaction terms between healthcare expenditure and investment have a negative statistically significant impact on growth. The marginal effect of healthcare expenditure evaluated at the minimum and maximum level of investment is positive, suggesting the impact of health expenditure on growth does not vary with the level of investments. This result responds to the primary objective of the article.

In policy terms, the impact of investment on healthcare is essential to addressing future health crises. The impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can never be separated from the shortages or low prioritization of health against other sectors of the economy. The article also provides an insight to policymakers on the demand for policy reform that will boost and make the health sector attractive to both domestic and foreign direct investment.

Given the vulnerability of SSA to the health crisis, there are limited studies to examine this phenomenon and first to address the needed investment priorities to the health sector infrastructure in SSA.

This paper aims to examine briefing practices and whether these are related to the quality of brief documents and client satisfaction in constructed health-care facilities in South Africa. The rational for the examination stems from the view held by scholars that the briefing process is critical to the success of projects, as well as client/user satisfaction in the constructed facility, and also because of undocumented reports of client/end-user dissatisfaction in constructed health-care facilities in South Africa.

The research process consisted of a literature review to identify existing briefing framework and practices in use applicable to facilities. This was supported by an exploratory case study of a recently completed public hospital in East London, South Africa. Data collection for the study was undertaken by means of conducting semi-structured interviews with two groups consisting of client representatives and the technical design team on the project.

The research established that in the context of this case study, inadequate client consultation took place, not all design consultants were adequately involved in the development of the project brief, limited use was made of a specific briefing framework in developing the project brief and that despite these shortcomings in the briefing process followed, a comprehensive good quality briefing document was produced and the client was satisfied with the health-care facility constructed.

The results of this study are generalizable with health-care facilities only. As such, research inferences and projections can only be made within this set and may not necessarily be applicable to the wider construction sector or to all projects within this sector.

The implications of this research are applicable to constructed health-care facilities. Practical inferences include the need to acknowledge that there is a need for a briefing framework, which should outline the involvement of all design consultants and client representatives when developing the project briefs for health-care facilities. The briefing framework is proposed for use in addressing the shortcomings in the briefing processes and practices and will also help the client in the choice of a brief process and practice which will comprehensively capture their requirements, give clear directives/information to the design consultants and will result in higher levels of end-user/patient satisfaction in the constructed health-care facility.

Clients and allied professionals in charge of health-care facilities’ construction are encouraged to consider the implementation of a standard framework for use in the briefing process. This reflection should encourage engagement through formative legislative provision and transparent awareness campaigns.

This work is original insofar, as it directly addresses the alignment of briefing practices to quality of brief documents and client satisfaction in constructed health-care facilities within the context of the South African construction industry. However, similar exercises have been undertaken on briefing practices in the wider construction sector.

This paper aims to describe the conduct and outcomes of an integrated assessment (IA) of the vulnerability to climate change of government service provision at regional scale in New South Wales, Australia. The assessment was co-designed with regional public sector managers to address their needs for an improved understanding of regional vulnerabilities to climate change and variability.

The study used IA of climate change impacts through a complex adaptive systems approach incorporating social learning and stakeholder-led research processes. Workshops were conducted with stakeholders from NSW government agencies, state-owned corporations and local governments representing the tourism, water, primary industries, human settlements, emergency management, human health, infrastructure and natural landscapes sectors. Participants used regional socioeconomic profiling and climate projections to consider the impacts on and the need to adapt community service provision to future climate.

Many sectors are currently experiencing difficulty coping with changes in regional demographics and structural adjustment in the economy. Climate change will result in further impacts on already vulnerable systems in the forms of resource conflicts between expanded human settlements, the infrastructure that supports them and the environment (particularly for water); increased energy costs; and declining agricultural production and food security.

This paper describes the application of meta-analysis in climate change policy research and frames climate change as a problem of environmental pollution and an issue of development and social equity.

In most countries procurement is undervalued compared to the attention paid to other key areas of Public Sector Reforms. Ghana represents a case in point. Under the health reforms in Ghana, the Ministry of Health and its partners (donors, financing institutions and the private sector) recognized the importance of procurement in its Medium-Term Health Sector Strategy for Ghana 1997 to 2001. With the aid of an external consultant, using a highly participatory approach in the development, training, and the implementation of new structures and procedures, good results have been achieved. Although work is ongoing and important challenges still need to be addressed, the authors argue that the new procurement structures now in place can serve as an example of a standardized support system for health reforms.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the management of the public sector health workforce in Botswana. Using institutional frameworks it aims to document and analyse human resource management (HRM) practices, and make recommendations to improve employee and health system outcomes.

The paper draws from a large study that used a mixed methods approach to assess performance of Botswana’s Ministry of Health (MOH). It uses data collected through document analysis and in-depth interviews of 54 key informants comprising policy makers, senior staff of the MOH and its stakeholder organizations.

Public health sector HRM in Botswana has experienced inadequate planning, poor deployment and underutilization of staff. Lack of comprehensive retention strategies and poor working conditions contributed to the failure to attract and retain skilled personnel. Relationships with both formal and informal environments affected HRM performance.

While document review was a major source of data for this paper, the weaknesses in the human resource information system limited availability of data.

This paper presents an argument for the need for consideration of formal and informal environments in developing effective HRM strategies.

This research provides a rare system-wide approach to health HRM in a Sub-Saharan African country. It contributes to the literature and evidence needed to guide HRM policy decisions and practices

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the declining conditions of many of the hospital buildings, especially in developing countries. Past studies have shown inadequate maintenance practices but how far regarding Nigerian public hospital buildings is yet to receive empirical research. This paper aims to investigate the underlying issues leading to inadequate maintenance practices and proffers policy options to improve Nigerian public hospital buildings via an unexplored dimension.

The study used a mixed research design method involving both qualitative and quantitative data. First, results from the qualitative phase were analysed and verified at the quantitative phase through a well-structured questionnaire, developed from the qualitative findings across hospital maintenance experts (work/maintenance department, health-care provider, design team and health-care building/service contractor) in Abuja, Lagos and Benin City.

Insufficient funds for maintenance works, absence of planned maintenance programmes, inadequately trained personnel, etc., emerged as the maintenance inadequacies in the public hospital buildings across the cities covered. The paper categorised the cause of inadequate maintenance practices of public hospital buildings into six groups: statutory requirements, design stage, construction stage, budget for maintenance task, managing maintenance unit activities and user’s perception regarding maintenance management.

This paper is limited to maintenance practices of Nigerian public hospital buildings. Future research is needed to evaluate factors that will enhance outsourcing maintenance and the use of the 4th industrial revolution (building information modelling for refurbishment and building automation systems) amongst others in maintenance practices of public hospital buildings.

As part of the practical implication, the government and hospital administrators should make provision for adequate funding and accountability of annual maintenance budgetary allocation. Also, the government should establish a national maintenance policy for public infrastructure with an emphasis on preventive maintenance and contractor’s reputation, outstanding pedigree, technical and financial soundness during build maintenance contract award, etc., were recommended.

This paper reveals that the stakeholders, especially hospital administrators, policymakers and political office holders that are concern with maintenance budget, approval and disbursement concerning maintenance practices in public hospital buildings need to reawaken to her responsibility because of the inadequate implementation across the cities covered.

Bangladesh is applauded for its achievement in various health and social outcomes though criticized for its failure in properly dealing with governance issues. The purpose of this paper is intends to see how the health outcomes (in case of life expectancy, under-five mortality and adolescent fertility) are impacted by health expenditure (both public and private), per capita income in presence of overall governance and female education. This paper assumes that rapid progress in female education reflects the Bangladeshis’ social responsiveness to change.

This paper uses autoregressive distributed lag technique to estimate the models with data ranges from 1990 to 2016 under two different scenarios.

This study has found that all the explanatory variables exert significant impact on health outcomes. Furthermore, public health expenditure is augmented with a composite governance issue, and this enhances robustness as well as statistical significance of the models. These suggest that the governance issues play a very crucial role to achieve the expected health outcomes. Female secondary enrolment ratio appears with improved coefficients in terms of sign and magnitude for all the health indicators.

This paper contributes to the existing literature showing econometric evidence that highlights the importance of governance and female education in improving health outcomes of Bangladesh apart from health expenditure and per capita gross domestic product.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the effects of regional income disparity and social diversity on local public goods delivery in Indonesia.

Using Indonesian provincial data over the period 2001–2014 and by way of System GMM, this paper circumvents endogeneity and persistence of key variables over time which may bias the estimated impact of the critical variables.

The result provides no significant evidence on the influence of regional income inequality on the provision of local public goods. The result reveals that ethnic diversity is associated with the more extensive provision of local public goods. A large difference in preferences toward public goods provision in a fragmented society such as Indonesia forces the local government to deliver a greater mixed of public goods to accommodate various preferences for public goods and ensure that each group has equal access to public goods. Political fragmentation within an ethnically heterogeneous society also encourages local politicians to provide a larger provision of public goods to form an inter-ethnic coalition to gain local political access.

The significant effect of ethnic diversity on public goods provision implies a set of policy recommendation for Indonesian Government in order to maintain peace within the country. The central government should establish a clear-cut standard of local public goods provision for local governments to ensure that that anyone has equal access to public goods regardless of ethnicity. This will mitigate the possibility of ethnic conflict in an ethnically plural society.

This paper extends its analysis using both fractionalization and polarization indexes to measure the social diversity in Indonesia to obtain a comprehensive knowledge regarding the influence of ethnic diversity on the public good provision. This paper proposes a set of policy recommendation for Indonesian Government to manage the effect of social diversity on the provision of local public goods. To the author’s knowledge, this has never been done before for Indonesia.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2018-0661