[Creation of a "planning-financial activity" subsystem of the "public health" automatic control system and its role in improving public health planning].
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The challenge of delivering health care on a more cost-effective and equitable basis has led to the formation of new kinds of organizations, which in turn require new kinds of management information systems. The system described in this article is used for planning resource allocation and monitoring the overall performance of Livingston Community Health Services, Inc., a rural community-owned health service designed to provide comprehensive care to a geographically defined target population. The Health Services Data System processes information on performance and productivity, effectiveness with respect to the target population, and billing and financial activities. Input consists of the results of a community census and two household surveys, patient registrations and patient services operating data, and financial data. Besides billing patients automatically, the system integrates financial, demographic, and health services utilization data to generate monthly summaries for the administrators, medical director, and community board. The article discusses several examples of these summaries, stratifying utilization by geographic location of residence, age, income, and race.
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As an ever increasing number of HIV-infected persons develop AIDS, treating the manifestations associated with HIV infection has become a new challenge to health sectors in developing countries. Given resource constraints of health systems before the AIDS epidemic, there is an urgent need to start examining ways in which health care can be delivered to the large number of AIDS patients, without infringing on other primary health care activities. This paper reviews current experience with AIDS patient care management in developing countries and determines some of the areas where further research is crucial. The main issues identified are: (1) that reliable data on standardized treatment schemes for AIDS patients are scarce; (2) that there is an urgent need for research on low-cost supportive treatment of AIDS patients, comparing costs and outcomes; (3) that outpatient and home-based care can be a valuable alternative to hospital-based care, but that cost-efficiency of these alternative treatment strategies should be examined more closely; and finally, that (4) the potential benefit of using HIV/AIDS patients to promote prevention of HIV transmission should be acknowledged.
In 1984, the Honduran Family Planning Association launched a contraceptive social marketing program by introducing the oral contraceptive, Perla. This report examines the impact of the program on overall oral contraceptive use, use by particular subgroups, source of supply, and costs. Although use of oral contraceptives increased only slightly over the period 1984-87 (from 12.7 percent to 13.4 percent among women in union aged 15-44), the social marketing program significantly increased its share of the oral contraceptive market (from 7 percent in 1984 to 15 percent in 1987, and from 20 percent to 40 percent of sales at pharmacies). For the Honduran Family Planning Association to have realized cost savings as a result of clients switching from community-based distribution programs and commercial supply sources to contraceptive social marketing programs, the association would have had to reallocate its resources. Instead, the number of distributors in the community-based distribution program increased, while the amount of couple-years of protection from oral contraceptives decreased.
The Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception retrospectively examined the impact of funding decreases on access to sterilization services at 20 nongovernmental family planning clinics in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. Clinic staff were asked questions about client fees, caseloads, availability of comparable low-cost or free services nearby, cost-recovery activities, and the socioeconomic profile of clients before, during the time, and after subsidies were lowered or eliminated. Funding reductions were followed by decreased caseloads at 14 of the 20 sites studied. Of the six others, four experienced an increase in caseloads, one saw no perceptible change, and one experienced a decrease only as a result of management policy to cut the caseload to improve quality. The most common response to the decrease in funding (shared by 17 sites) was an increase in client fees. In all but three of the 17 clinics, the increase in fees was met with a decline in caseloads. Moreover, at nine of these 17 sites, the fee increase effected a change in client mix; anecdotal evidence suggests that more middle-income and fewer lower-income clients were using sterilization services. Four lessons can be drawn from this study: Donors need to plan funding phase-outs carefully, in conjunction with grantees; grantees need to assess the costs of the procedure realistically, and assign fees accordingly; management needs to seek alternative funding sources in lieu of, or in addition to, increasing fees; and caseloads can be increased and costs recovered by diversifying services.
We investigated the impact of a short-lived policy of charging fees to patients attending public-sector outpatient health facilities in Kenya by collecting data on attendance at Nairobi's Special Treatment Clinic for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) before (23 months), during (9 months), and after (15 months) the user-charge period. During the user-charge period, the seasonally adjusted total mean monthly attendance of men decreased significantly to 40% (95% CI 36-45) of that before fees were levied. Attendance rose in the post-user-charge period, but reached only 64% (59-68) of the pre-user-charge level. For women, the adjusted total mean monthly attendance during the user-charge period was reduced significantly to 65% (55-77) of the pre-user-charge level. Mean monthly attendance by women rose in the post-user-charge period to 22% (9-37) above the pre-user-charge level. There was no evidence of an increase in attendance over the course of the user-charge period among either men or women. The introduction of user fees probably increased the number of untreated STDs in the population, with potentially serious long-term health implications. The user-fee experience in Kenya should be carefully evaluated before similar measures are introduced elsewhere.
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Three hundred and sixty-one women were provided government-funded sterilization reversal services with the technique of microsurgery. A large majority of reasons (89.8%) for requesting reversal surgery was a loss of children, and the mean interval between sterilization and reversal was 28.7 months. Two hundred and seven (69.7%) of 297 follow-up cases have experienced term delivery or intra-uterine pregnancy and 5 cases were ectopic pregnancy. The largest number of reversal clients (63.3%) were sterilized by the laparoscopic unipolar coagulation technique and the next largest group (24.2%) was sterilized by the laparoscopic banding technique. The highest pregnancy rate (77.8%) was shown in clients who had undergone laparoscopic banding technique while the lowest (65.9%) was the group of laparoscopic unipolar coagulation. A more than 60% of the clients became pregnant within 6 months of their reversal surgery, with the shortest interval being 1 month, the longest 39 months, and the mean 7.6 months. A large majority of the successful cases, 81.6%, were pregnant within 1 year of their reversal surgery.
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This paper presents a brief review of historical developments in women's health care. It describes the current campaign against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and assesses the campaign's success in light of its history and the reality of women's lives. The authors suggest that women are forced into a double-bind in which they are expected to take responsibility for the prevention of STDs although they may not have the ability to do so. Modifications are suggested which take into account gender-role socialization and social group norms.
The Reagan Administration sought to decentralize many federal programs by (1) consolidating categorical grants into black grants; (2) reducing their funding; and (3) relying more upon state fiscal support. This study examines the effects of this decentralist policy upon the federal family planning program. Two periods are analyzed: (1) FY 1976-1981, the period immediately prior to the Reagan Administration and (2) FY 1982-1987, the period during the Reagan Administration. Findings show that a more decentralized program produced less responsiveness to individual state needs for family planning, and that these effects could have been predicted from the previous period.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia implemented an eight-month prospective surveillance system in 24 hospitals distributed among states with and without public funding for abortion. Out of 3,157 visits for abortion-related complications, only 10 women gave a history of non-physician or self-induced abortion and none were Medicaid recipients. The small number of hospitals located in non-funded states and the smaller numbers of women served in these hospitals than in the funded states limited the power of out study. Women living along the Texas-Mexico border appeared more likely to have complications after illegal abortions than women from other areas of the country.