Search

The article presents a memorandum of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association on the Second Green Paper on the future of the National Health Service in Great Britain. The association aims to coordinate the National Health Service and the Local Government services and welcome the participation of legal professionals and consumers. Policies concerning the management are given more importance rather than the daily administration activities. Furthermore, a single authorities should be recognized in each areas of the Health Service, including the social work and medical services.

Health planning in this paper is considered as a developmental process in which different types of planning appear at different times. These types are discussed and the place in the complex health care system developing in the United States is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article Lindsay [16][2] invented a theory of the National Health Service (NHS), which in its normative form implies the possible Pareto optimality of a nationalized health care system, and in a positive form shows that such a system may be an implication of rational collective behaviour by individuals having certain arguments in their utility functions. In common with other rationales for government intervention in the market for health care, Lindsay's "sharing" hypothesis is based upon the externality relation in health care consumption. The sharing hypothesis differs, however, from more conventional approaches in that the externality-affected parties (e.g. the relatively rich) have their utility levels affected by the quantity of health care each individual receives in relation to others rather than only the absolute amount each receives. The present paper seeks to re-instate the more traditional approach as a "philanthropy" hypothesis in which it is the quantity of "suffering" felt by people rather than the distribution of "suffering" that forms the basis of the externality relation, and which affords a better explanation of the NHS. In this paper the normative interpretation of Lindsay's theory will not be considered since a necessary condition for testing propositions in collective welfare economics (i.e. consensus decision-making) is clearly not fulfilled (Buchanan [2], Buchanan and Tullock [5]). For positive analysis, however, we might proceed faute de mieux on the assumption that collective decisions are made "as if" this condition were fulfilled, or introduce modifications where appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides information on contraceptive practices of women in certain low-income areas useful for family planning agencies, and examines the utilization patterns of the medically indigent poor as compared with others in low income areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the program of the U.S. Army to identify heroin users in Vietnam and how it operates. Whether methadone can be used with servicemen is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses principles of group activity and bases their validity on behavior in an actual setting, as applied to health planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operations-research workers have not met with much success in being accepted as integral members of regional-health-planning teams, owing in part to a lack of understanding by health planners of the skills the operations researcher has to offer and in part the analyst's inability to demonstrate that he can close the gap between theoretical modeling and the implementation of his results. This paper explores the growth of regional health planning in the United States and highlights its important problem areas. The literature of operations-research applications to health planning is reviewed critically with respect to the feasibility of models and the appropriateness of assumptions. Specific problems with the types of studies currently in the literature are identified and recommendations are made for improved coordination between operations-research workers and health planners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the health policy issues become increasingly more salient to political scientists as a whole series of major decisions about future causes of action in health emerge before the U.S. President and Congress. State and local governments are also responding to the continued pressure of rising expenditures in health, especially for care of the poor and the medically indigent. On the current national legislative agenda are such items as a major expansion of national health insurance, restructuring of local and state health planning, continuing the commitment to health research and increasing health manpower training support.

Since June 1963 official groups in all fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, have been participants in the most exciting and comprehensive attacks on the problems of mental illness and mental health ever to be attempted in this nation on the state level. With the financial assistance of the federal government, each of these mental health planning projects will be engaged in the process of developing a comprehensive mental health plan. This nation ride effort has stimulated the attention of many citizen and professional groups. To social work, which still looks to the heritage of the settlement movement, there is a familiar ring to the concept of meeting the nation's mental health needs in the community. This paper reports the early stages of the effort in one state, Massachusetts. It is not intended to reflect directly the situation or experience of other states, but much of what is reported will sound familiar. Though the focus will be local rather than national, the Massachusetts Mental Health Planning Project can best be examined within its historical perspective.

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the differential impact of the Medicaid program on state incomes in 1967-68. Benefits and costs of the program are calculated for each state and the results are evaluated in terms of the perceived original intent of the program planners. It was found that although the program favors the poor in all states with Title XIX plans, it does so at the expense of extreme horizontal inequity. The conclusion is that federal incentives for the development of comprehensive state Medicaid programs are inadequate to insure an equitable system for the distribution of program benefits and costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper endeavors to overcome one difficulty in health planning, namely, the transformation of general goals and ideas into operational objectives for programs. A method is developed to be used for generating such program objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emphasizes the need to bring environmental health into the framework of comprehensive health planning. The author discusses how this can be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this paper argues that we need a national system for collection of health data which will meet the needs of planners, evaluators and investigators at local, state and federal levels and that national health insurance legislation should require the collection of these data as well as the facts needed for fiscal management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the political strategies employed by the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Planning Program to remove legal impediments to effective manpower planning, as well as the consequences. Conclusions as to alternative courses of action are stated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a lecture on psychiatric issues among developing countries is presented. Several medical personnel identified these problems that had apparently limitless concept of morbidity. These include infection, faulty sanitation, malnutrition and diseases which had a minimal number of trained personnel to cope. Public health planning prioritize the deployment of preventive measures against debilitating disease and focuses on a campaign for adequate nutrition.

The article offers information on the challenges faced by the American Public Health Association on the development of the association's Medical Care Section in the U.S. On November 10, 1948, the American Public Health Association's Governing Council voted to approve the petition requesting the establishment of a Medical Care Section. In 1972, the association expanded their health services because of the changes on their needs and demands. In 1920, the association created a committee to study the municipal health departments and determine the extent of variation on the health services and procedures offered in a specific community.

The article focuses on the development of neighborhood health center approach to health care delivery in the U.S. The neighborhood health centers have proliferated under a variety of federal grant-in-aid programs and private sources of support. It was mentioned that neighborhood health center approach demands an increasing emphasis on cost-effective management of neighborhood health centers and increased revenue generation activities. In addition, changes in federal health service funding policies have necessitated a reevaluation of sources of future support for neighborhood health centers.

A theoretical model using mainly the theory of absorbing Markov chains is applied to several human-blood-issuing policies. The objective of the model applications is to determine the effects of the Suing policies on average inventory levels, which determine blood shortage probabilities, and on the average age of blood at the time it is transfused. Issuing policies that issue (transfuse) fresher blood with a higher probability than older blood are defined as modified LIFO policies, and issuing policies that issue older blood with a higher probability than fresher blood are defined as modified FIFO policies. Application of the theoretical model to the various issuing policies allows complete evaluation of the policies, and a policy choice can be made on the basis of the evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on medical care policies. The detailed analysis of costs and the changing character of medical expenditures is very useful. The interpretation of the statistics is confined to those facts on which an economist can rightly pass judgment. Monopsonistic buying by government may eliminate some selling and advertising expense but the procurement experience of the United States government does not augur well for efficiency. The amount of the total cost to be allocated is of considerable importance in discussing methods of financing compulsory health insurance. The actual cost of compulsory health insurance would depend on several variables. These include: the efficiency with which the government operated its ventures in general, the number of people covered, the number and kinds of medical services and facilities made available, the extent to which people made use of the system, the number of governmental payrollers involved in addition to medical personnel, and the volume of abuses that developed.

A list of articles related to public health published in several journals are presented including "Integration of Medical Research and Health Policies," by S. P. Strickland, and "Strokes and Hypertension," by A. B. Carter.

The article reports on the final Hover Commission report, which focuses on the subject of government research and development in the U.S. According to sources, the report reversed its usual plea for reduction of federal spending by recommending increased support for research activities. Moreover, the report stressed the overriding importance of basic research, in which the safety, the increase in productivity, and the advance of health in the country must come from constantly increasing knowledge through fundamental research. Thus, five overall recommendations were made, including increased support for basic research, and establishment of assistant secretaryships in research and development in the Army.