Articles: health.
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GMS Health Technol Assess · Jan 2008
Procedures and Criteria for the regulation of innovative non-medicinal technologies into the benefit catalogue of solidly financed health care insurances.
Because great interest in an efficient range of effective medicinal innovations and achievements has arisen, many countries have introduced procedures to regulate the adoption of innovative non-medicinal technologies into the benefit catalogue of solidly financed health care insurances. With this as a background, this report will describe procedures for the adoption of innovative non-medicinal technologies by solidly financed health care insurances in Germany, England, Australia and Switzerland. This report was commissioned by the German Agency for Health Technology Assessment at the German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information. ⋯ In principle, the starting point for improving regulations of innovative non-medicinal technologies lies in the extension of transparency, the shortening of decision-making time (especially the central decision-making processes), the further development of evaluation methods, more flexibility and increased capacity in the governing bodies' decision-making processes and also, if needed, in the creation of a single authority to act as contact for people who are interested in introducing an innovation into the benefit catalogue. More research is required, especially in the area of decentralized decision-makers and how they actually decide whether or not to introduce innovative technologies into the core care system (methods, criteria, etc.). In view of this, it would also be interesting to see how the application of innovations actually happens in practice once their adoption has been approved by the corresponding governing bodies.
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BMC Int Health Hum Rights · Dec 2007
Indigenous well-being in four countries: an application of the UNDP'S human development index to indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.
Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand consistently place near the top of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index (HDI) rankings, yet all have minority Indigenous populations with much poorer health and social conditions than non-Indigenous peoples. It is unclear just how the socioeconomic and health status of Indigenous peoples in these countries has changed in recent decades, and it remains generally unknown whether the overall conditions of Indigenous peoples are improving and whether the gaps between Indigenous peoples and other citizens have indeed narrowed. There is unsettling evidence that they may not have. It was the purpose of this study to determine how these gaps have narrowed or widened during the decade 1990 to 2000. ⋯ The inconsistent progress in the health and well-being of Indigenous populations over time, and relative to non-Indigenous populations, points to the need for further efforts to improve the social, economic, and physical health of Indigenous peoples.
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Fractures of the thoracolumbar spine rank among the severest injuries of the human skeleton. Especially in younger patients they often result from high-energy accidents. Recently, a shift in paradigm towards more aggressive treatment strategies including anterior procedures could be observed. ⋯ Thus, patients do not seem to regain their former QoL. However, the level of discomfort was comparably low in all groups, even in patients with more severe injuries requiring extensive surgery. Overall, outcome and QoL after traumatic fractures of the thoracolumbar spine rather seem to be determined by the severity of injury than by pain regulation or other psychosocial factors which is likely the case in low back pain disorders.