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The privatization of mental healthcare among social workers has situated them under scrutiny by others in the profession who question private practice clinicians' commitment to social justice. Some social workers accuse colleagues in private practice of a dereliction of duty, while others in the profession contend that the entrepreneurship of mental healthcare is the only way to freely realize real-world social justice change. Hence, this qualitative research study explores how clinical social workers define social justice as well as if and how they integrate it in a private practice setting. This small qualitative research study was designed to begin to illuminate strengths and gaps regarding how clinical social workers define as well as if and how they integrate social justice in a private practice setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Emergency medicine personnel frequently respond to major disasters. They expect to have an effective and efficient management system to elegantly allocate available resources. Despite claims to the contrary, experience demonstrates this rarely occurs.Objectives: This article describes privatizing disaster assessment using a single-purposed, accountable, and well-trained organization. The goal is to achieve elegant disaster assessment, rather than repeatedly exhorting existing groups to do it.Discussion: The Rapid Disaster Evaluation System (RaDES) would quickly and efficiently assess a postdisaster population's needs. It would use an accountable nongovernmental agency's teams with maximal training, mobility, and flexibility. Designed to augment the Inter-Agency Standing Committee's 2015 Emergency Response Preparedness Plan, RaDES would provide the initial information needed to avoid haphazard and overlapping disaster responses. Rapidly deployed teams would gather information from multiple sources and continually communicate those findings to their base, which would then disseminate them to disaster coordinators in a concise, coherent, and transparent way.Conclusions: The RaDES concept represents an elegant, minimally bureaucratic, and effective rapid response to major disasters. However, its implementation faces logistical, funding, and political obstacles. Developing and maintaining RaDES would require significant funding and political commitment to coordinate the numerous agencies that claim to be performing the same tasks. Although simulations can demonstrate efficacy and deficiencies, only field tests will demonstrate RaDES' power to improve interagency coordination and decrease the cost of major disaster response. At the least, the RaDES concept should serve as a model for discussing how to practicably improve our current chaotic disaster responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with community psychologist Carl Walker is presented on the topic of informal mental health work and activism. Topics discussed include his views against the marketisation and privatisation of the British National Health Service (NHS) as a form of austerity, his criticism of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and his use of surveys to find out how people feel about the NHS services.

How and when does welfare policy contribute to shape public opinion? This article departs from the policy feedback research tradition and seeks to contribute to the understanding of how policy influences public opinion (public responsiveness). The argument here suggests that personal experiences in terms of empowerment condition the dynamics between policy and opinion. The empirical case concerns the implementation of a consumer's choice model in Swedish primary health care, which resulted an intended increase in private health care centres. In this case, empowerment is assumed to be enhanced by increased exit options and freedom of choice. The specific question in the analysis is whether citizens who have empowering experiences, as a consequence of the reform, are more likely to be positive towards further privatization of welfare services. The results show few effects in general, but there seems to be a correlation between the experience of exiting and more positive attitudes towards privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Birmingham, Alabama, in 1987, a white conservative movement arose in opposition to build a new healthcare clinic in downtown through the use of eminent domain. Critics claimed the Kirklin Clinic reflected urban corruption and the privatization of the public sphere. Municipal officials and white economic elites argued that the clinic secured the city’s economic transition from industrialization to healthcare. The clinic, however, was the manifestation of a twenty-year campaign to privatize healthcare services in a public university as well as the result of market shifts in healthcare disbursement policies. Neoliberal governance guided this urban economic development project. The controversy over the clinic reveals the ideological and class tensions among metropolitan whites, as well as conservatives’ demands for their inclusion and the recognition of their rights by the municipal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1961 New York City (NYC) brokered more than ten "affiliation" agreements between private academic medical centers (AMCs) and 18 of the City's 21 public hospitals, to fix crises in both sectors. For nearly 50 years NYC poured millions of dollars into the AMCs to run the public hospitals, giving private institutions enormous power and advantage in deciding how to spend the money; thus placing the delivery of healthcare to the public primarily in the hands of the private sector. This article examines the Columbia University/Harlem Hospital affiliation in the 1960s. It brings the discussion to 2010 when the Health and Hospitals Corporation dissolved the relationship after years of mismanagement, carelessness and tragedy; and entered a corporate phase of privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Saudi Medical Journal is the property of Saudi Medical Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The existence of different and conflicting definitions and different types, but few clear measures, of privatization has contributed to different interpretations of the extent of privatization in the almost 70-year history of the British National Health Service (NHS). This article aims to examine the extent of privatization in the NHS over successive policy chronologies through the lens of the 'three dimensional' approach of the Mixed Economy of Welfare. We find that whilst privatization in the NHS is not new, the generally accepted view that it has increased in recent years appears valid, although precision is difficult due to the lack of a generally accepted typology or measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Infectious diseases are one of the major causes of child mortality in India. Pediatric patients are commonly prescribed antibiotics for non-bacterial infections. Monitoring of local antibiotic prescribing with respect to the diagnosis is necessary to improve the prescribing practices. The aim of the study was to describe antibiotic prescribing for potential infections among patients admitted in pediatric departments in two private sector hospitals; one teaching (TH) and one non-teaching (NTH) in Central India. Methods: Data from all patients admitted at the pediatric departments of both study hospitals was collected manually, for 3 years (2008–2011) using a customized form. Data from inpatients aged 0–18 years, diagnosed with; acute gastroenteritis (AGE), respiratory tract infections, enteric fever, viral fever or unspecified fever were focused for analysis. Antibiotic prescriptions were analysed using the WHO Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification system and defined daily doses (DDDs). Adherence to the Indian Academy of Pediatrics list of essential medicines (IAP-LEM) was investigated. P-values <0.05 were considered significant. Results: Oftotal6, 825 inpatients admitted at two pediatric departments, 510 patients from the TH and 2,479from the NTH were selected based on the assigned potential infectious diagnoses. Of these, 224 patients (44%) at the TH and 2,088 (84%) at the NTH were prescribed at least one antibiotic during hospital stay (odds ratio-0.69, 95%confidence interval-0.52 to 0.93; p<0.001). Patients with AGE, viral- and enteric fever were frequently prescribed antibiotics at both hospitals, yet higher proportion were prescribed antibiotics at the NTH compared to the TH. Broad-spectrum antibiotics were the most commonly prescribed antibiotic class in both hospitals, namely third generation cephalosporins, J01DD (69%) at the TH, and new fixed dose combinations of antibiotics J01R (FDCs, 42%) at the NTH. At the TH, 37% of the antibiotic prescriptions were comprised of antibiotics listed in the IAP-LEM, compared to 24% at the NTH (p<0.05). Conclusions: Broad-spectrum antibiotics were prescribed frequently in both hospitals also for the un-indicated conditions such as viral fever and enteric fever. At the NTH, new FDCs were more frequently prescribed and adherence to the IAP-LEM was substantially lower at the NTH compared to the TH. The results demonstrate need to develop diagnosis-specific prescribing guidelines to facilitate rational use of antibiotics and implement antibiotic stewardship program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workers at the oldest maternity hospital in Colombia experienced the privatization of health care and the flexibilization of their labor. Drawing on their experience, I illustrate how neoliberalism transforms the value of life. This transformation occurs first in terms of its moral worth: the worth of life changes over time, as people and public hospitals are stigmatized as the ‘living memory’ of the old. Second, the hospital buildings, the land on which they sit, and the roles of workers within the hospital are all transformed. Both similarities and differences emerge between a type of systemic or chronic violence that is inherent to the capitalist system and modern practices of torture. Examining how capitalist forces transform the value of life opens up new fields of inquiry to study links between critical political economy and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider how the international cross-ownership of firms affects the privatization of a public firm competing with foreign firms. We show that when firms compete á la Cournot in a third market under a linear demand function, the domestic ownership of foreign firms can impede privatization, whereas the foreign ownership of the domestic firm can promote privatization. Moreover, the domestic ownership of foreign firms can render neither complete privatization nor complete nationalization optimal under moderate conditions. Conversely, when firms compete á la Bertrand, we demonstrate that it is always optimal to pursue complete nationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational studies of healthcare are focused on the contribution of organizational solutions to improved performance. The corporatization and customer satisfaction research have led healthcare organizations to reflect on the concept of quality. Not only the quality of the service but also the relationships with patients and all operations of the organization. It is important to implement appropriate assessment systems that affect, in an integrated way, customer satisfaction, health-staff contribution, and the performance of the entire organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the discourses about the health privatization from the analysis of interviews and manifests of three Catalan movements: Centre d'Anàlisis i Programes Sanitaris (Caps), Grup de Defensa de Sanitat Pública (15MBCNSalut) and Plataforma Pel Dret a la Salut (PDS). The content analysis has been adopted as methodology. The analysis has evidenced a dichotomy between public and private systems as a duality that structures discourses favoring the public model and the great efforts made by the movements to guarantee that model. This has shaped the movements as a revolutionary force that defends the public system from private threats by assuming that it essentially represents the people's ideals. The debate between the traditional and the new in social action has been central to the analysis, as well as the problem of coexistence of different models of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antibiotics may be thought of as a common pool resource that can be depleted over time; the economics of this problem are relatively well known. The importance of antibiotics to human health means that limiting access through privatization is undesirable. Therefore, other solutions to prevent overuse are essential - stewardship programs, and for non-human use, taxation, all within the context of an international agreement. To solve problems of access while offering adequate rewards for innovation, a key tool is delinking prices from payment to innovators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a decades-long national trend towards privatization, local governments have turned to private contractors to provide health care in American prisons and jails. Ostensibly, the driving force behind this phenomenon is a desire to cut costs in an era of expanding prison health care expenditures and contracting governmental revenue streams. Local government officials build the cost-cutting incentive directly into their contracts via fixed-rate payment structures and cost-sharing provisions for off-site emergency treatment. While these contracts encourage cost-reduction, they simultaneously discourage proper oversight; their indemnification clauses render local governments largely immune from financial consequences when contractors deny emergency care to inmates in crisis. The predictable and tragic result of this combination of incentives and disincentives is unnecessary injury and death. A § 1983 lawsuit against the contracting local government, however, could force officials to reform their prison health care contracts--to elevate the goal of quality health care provision to the priority it should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the present configuration of Brazil’s health system. Although it is defined as comprising universal access, hegemonic public funding and direct provision of care, today it is fragmented and under private sector hegemony, with strong inequity in health care provision. Comparison between health expenditure indicators in 26 emerging countries shows that state expenditures have been of lesser magnitude, even as compared with other emerging countries. Out-of-pocket expenditures are high and that compromises equity. The failures of Brazil´s health reform are seen as an outcome of the pattern of organization of domestic collective interests. It is argued that, as the Constitution proposed no veto against the market operating in the health sector, interests with greater voice have succeeded in imposing their preferences in decision-making arenas for private health care. The discussion is based on policy analysis literature and health system typologies. The data are analysed by descriptive statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The health reform adopted in Colombia in 1993 was promoted by different agencies as the model to follow in matters of health policy. Following the guidelines of the Washington Consensus and the World Bank, the Government of Colombia, with the support of national political and economic elites, reorganized the management of health services based on market principles, dismantled the state system, increased finances of the sector, assigned the management of the system to the private sector, segmented the provision of services, and promoted interaction of actors in a competitive scheme of low regulation. After 20 years of implementation, the Colombian model shows serious flaws and is an object of controversy. The Government has weakened as the governing entity for health; private groups that manage the resources were established as strong centers of economic and political power; and violations of the right to health increased. Additionally, corruption and service cost overruns have put a strain on the sustainability of the system, and the state network is in danger of closing. Despite its loss of prestige at the internal level, various actors within and outside the country tend to keep the model based on contextual reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Queensland's Health Legislation Amendment Act 2013 and a dispute involving the privatisation of health assets and services in the region, focusing on the attitudes of various physicians in Queensland regarding employment contracts. The 2001 British court case R (Heather) v. Leonard Cheshire Foundation, which deals with the obligations of private entities towards publically funded clients in Great Britain, is examined. Queensland's Health Ombudsman Act 2013 is assessed.

The main argument for the ongoing privatization process is that privatization will lead to an increase in efficiency, which has been confirmed by a large number of studies. An important argument against privatization is that privatization may lead to employment reductions. In the hospital sector, potential employment reductions might also lead to a decrease in the quality of care. This is the first study to investigate the employment effects of different types of hospital privatization (i.e., for-profit vs non-profit privatization) on different categories of staff. A combination of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference methods was used to identify the causal effect. We found large employment reductions after for-profit privatization, while there were no permanent reductions after non-profit privatization. Moreover, even for-profit privatization does not affect all types of staff. While there are large reductions in non-clinical staff, we could not detect any reduction in the number of physicians. The consequences of the detected employment effects of privatization have to be addressed in greater detail in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of devolution in Great Britain on the National Health Service (NHS). It explains the increase in healthcare expenditure as one of the main reasons for the privatisation of the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also mentions the changes made by Scottish and Welsh governments through partnership agenda encouraging the healthcare professionals to work together whereas England and Northern Ireland continues on the path of patient choice.

Although China's 2009 health-care reform has made impressive progress in expansion of insurance coverage, much work remains to improve its wasteful health-care delivery. Particularly, the Chinese health-care system faces substantial challenges in its transformation from a profit-driven public hospital-centered system to an integrated primary care-based delivery system that is cost effective and of better quality to respond to the changing population needs. An additional challenge is the government's latest strategy to promote private investment for hospitals. In this Review, we discuss how China’s health-care system would perform if hospital privatisation combined with hospital-centered fragmented delivery were to prevail—population health outcomes would suffer; health-care expenditures would escalate, with patients bearing increasing costs; and a two-tiered system would emerge in which access and quality of care are decided by ability to pay. We then propose an alternative pathway that includes the reform of public hospitals to pursue the public interest and be more accountable, with public hospitals as the benchmarks against which private hospitals would have to compete, with performance-based purchasing, and with population-based capitation payment to catalyse coordinated care. Any decision to further expand the for-profit private hospital market should not be made without objective assessment of its effect on China’s health-policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health care is one of the major issues in social policy, affected by multiple factors, such as the increase in health costs, crisis, and the degree of private participation in the financing of services. In this essay we reflect on this participation of the private sector in health care, with Brazil as a reference country and taking into account member states of the Union of South American Nations. Based on a qualitative study using data from national and international organizations, we found significant private participation in health care of countries in various continents, with an increase of public and private spending between 2000 and 2010. Regardless of the adopted health system, there was an increase of private spending in most countries analyzed, which emphasizes the need to further evaluate the performance of public and private sectors, as well as the regulatory frameworks for their participation in health care, thus enabling policies that promote quality improvement and the expansion of coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper attempts to collate literature from various sources, in an attempt to answer four pertinent questions related to private health care in India. Firstly, emerging relationship between private health care and market, secondly how the private health care sector is delivering health in terms of its quality; thirdly what is the structure and pattern of health care from the provider's perspective? Finally, the paper tries to highlight some of the dehumanizing issues/aspects in private health care which are relevant for the consumers of health care. Markets in the health care are also governed by the purchasing power of the individuals in society. They are not democratic institutions and it results into the marginalization of the marginal. It is evident that the private health sectors attracts and treat persons who can pay more hence it is selective. Quality of health care in private sector is a myth as in private sector job insecurity and poor working conditions bound to affect the quality of care provided to the patients. Private health care professionals are essentially for the sale and use of goods produced by the health care industry. User charges, usage of high tech diagnostic tools, irrational diagnosis, and technology for money has become a culture of practice for the doctors. Professionals in healthcare defend unfair and trade practices which sometimes leads to the unethical practices under the garb of professional independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following are tragic stories of prisoners subjected to irresponsible privatized healthcare companies, along with the many cases of neglect that have been deliberated by the United States Supreme Court. This Note concerns the privatization of healthcare within the nation's prison systems, and addresses the effects of privatized prisons on prisoner's rights under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. This Note also presents current facts about the companies that are contracted by the government to provide healthcare and/or prison facilities. Finally, this Note addresses the possible remedies to the current failings, and highlights the ability of the courts to intervene on prisoners' behalf through § 1983 Bivens claims of Eighth Amendment violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can citizens in an authoritarian country like China influence policy implementation? Two types of scholarship indicate ways that they can: The first proposes that policy implementation is carried Out through a fragmented authoritarian system that requires consultation and cooperation among various government units, and this system is amenable to pressure from outside groups. The second examines institutional channels designed to handle grievances and bridge communication between citizens and the authorities. In this paper, I emphasize a link between these two bodies of scholarship, showing how protest channels are connected to the fragmented authoritarian system and how the imperative to maintain social stability leads higher-level authorities to resolve departmental conflicts in favour of protesters. I do this by examining a struggle against the privatization of a hospital in North China, a case that ifiustrates how protesters successfully employed both the petition system and the opportunities offered by the fragmented authoritarian system to develop powerful alliances, to peacefully pressure top local authorities to intervene and to overcome opposition in the local government, leading to finalizing the municipalization of the hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The privatization of health services is an emerging trend in Asia. China and Vietnam are no exceptions, with their reforms to promote private hospitals gradually developed in early 1990s. As newcomers to the health-care system, private hospitals must achieve legitimacy in a state-dominated system in order to survive and develop. This paper describes the strategies of the quest to gain legitimacy from the state through “public-lization” and from the public through a campaign to associate private hospitals with professionalism, a caring environment, and customer orientation. It argues that, in a transitional economy, when the state is allocating power to other sectors but maintaining a central position, private hospitals must be careful to seek legitimacy from the state and, equally importantly, their customers. Improvements to the institutional environment to ensure better regulation are recommended, as well as professional self-scrutiny and consumer participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of policy and institutional reform are of major interest to numerous disciplines in the social sciences. The main question motivating this study is under what circumstances is dramatic reform possible. It is argued that theories of reform formulated within two central heuristic frameworks—historical institutionalism and punctuated equilibrium—fail to satisfactorily explain reform dynamics in small policy domains, which are characterized by having program constituencies with little political clout. In small policy domains, dramatic reform is facilitated by the political weakness of the opposition. Policy makers are able to pursue reform successfully in small domains without resorting to obfuscation strategies or reliance on slow-moving institutional mechanisms. This argument is illustrated in a study of mental health care privatization in two American states: Massachusetts and Texas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using a unique dataset on the geographic distribution of reported protest events from local sources, the study explains the variation in community-level mobilization in response to neoliberal reforms in two countries in the global periphery. Building on insights from macro, cross-national studies of protests related to market reforms, this article highlights local structural conditions that more likely generate popular contention in poorer countries. Count regression models show that localities with greater levels of state and community infrastructure (highways, administrative offices, universities, NGOs and local chapters of oppositional parties) were associated with heightened collective action opposing the privatization of health care and public utilities. These state and community infrastructures were shaped by national contexts in the era of state-led development preceding the current epoch of accelerated globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After 1945 all countries of the communist Eastern Europe implemented a uniform model of health-care system and health policies called socialist Health Services that provided universal, free of charge health care to all citizens. The initial model underwent many reforms with the largest change taking place during the country's democratization and transition to a market economy system after 1989. The processes of the democratization of the political life and economic changes included privatization of the health-care and medical services. In addition to state hospitals, medical care was provided by private doctors and these services were fully paid for by patients. The private medical care was greatly available but was not controlled by the state until a few years later when the state developed networks of state-regulated services, including public and independent health-care centers. Among other changes of the recent decades was establishment of accreditation system in Polish medical institutions implemented in Poland after 1997. As of 2011 there are 98 accredited Polish hospitals. The prevailing mix-health-care system (private and public) is divided by differences in quality of services, with much higher quality medical services being offered by private clinics than by state-sponsored hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wide variety of health-care systems, ranging from the traditional private medical practice to medical care services, is organized by the government in Turkey. In the 1990s, as a result of privatization movement at the international level, the Turkish Government took the decision to financially support the establishment of new private health-care facilities in order to answer the increasing health-care needs of people and, at the same time, to create a competitive market to improve the quality of health care. This paper investigates, first, the growth pattern of the number of private hospitals beds versus public hospital beds and their spatial distribution in Istanbul; then, the relationships between the number of public and private hospital beds and the characteristics of the districts, such as population, income and education by using regression analysis. According to the results, while income and education are the most important factors to affect the number of private hospital beds, no relationship is found between the number of public hospital beds and the characteristics of the districts. Thus, most of the private hospitals are concentrated in the higher income neighborhoods. More efforts should be spent for balanced distribution of public and private hospital beds with respect to health-care needs of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary explores some of the issues raised by Gilbert et al. short communication, Morality and Markets in the NHS. The increasing role of market mechanisms and the changing types of healthcare providers together with the use of choice and competition to drive improvements in quality in the National Health Service (NHS), all have important ethical implications. In order for the NHS to continue providing the level of service quality that out performs many high-income countries, despite spending much less on healthcare, we need a re-think of creeping marketization and privatisation and a consolidation of the NHS as a publically owned resource run for the benefit of patients and the public, not commercial interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reprint of the article "The Struggle in Zimbabwe" by Robert Chrisman, which appeared in the Spring 2007 of the journal "The Black Scholar," is presented. The article introduces the articles published in the edition, discusses Zimbabwean independence and Zimbabwean political leader Robert Mugabe, and the economic and social inequities of black Zimbabweans. It discusses Zimbabwean self-determination, the privatization of health care, and the organization the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The article discusses the concerns raised by health authorities and public health advocates about the expiration of the 2004 Health Accord, an agreement that guarantees provincial governments an annual 6% increase in federal health care funding from the federal government, in 2014. Topics covered include the proposed reduction in annual funding for provinces, the demise of the Health Council of Canada as a result, and the health care privatization plans of provincial health ministers.

The Doctor-Patient Relationship (DPR) is a complex concept in the medical sociology in which patients voluntarily approach a doctor and thus become a part of a contract in which they tends to abide with the doctor's guidance. Globally, the DPR has changed drastically over the years owing to the commercialization and privatization of the health sector. Furthermore, the dynamics of the DPR has shown a significant change because of the formulation of consumer protection acts; clauses for professional misconduct and criminal negligence; establishment of patient forums and organizations; massive expansion of the mass media sector leading to increase in health awareness among people; and changes in the status of the doctors. Realizing the importance of DPR in the final outcome and quality of life of the patient, multiple measures have been suggested to make a correct diagnosis and enhance healing. To conclude, good DPR is the crucial determinant for a better clinical outcome and satisfaction with the patients, irrespective of the socio-cultural determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]