BMC health services research

BACKGROUND: Regional and hierarchical disparities in gynecological care may compromise equity and quality in China. Assessing structural resources, clinical processes, and outcomes is critical to guide system improvement. METHODS: We conduc…

BACKGROUND: Phenol is widely used as a minimally invasive treatment for pilonidal sinus disease (PSD); however, its clinical application is characterized by substantial heterogeneity in indications, technique, dosing, and safety practices. …

BACKGROUND: Despite the widespread use of telehealth, particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been little published evidence about the effect of telehealth on the therapeutic relationship and clinician and patient interacti…

BACKGROUND: Medical invalidation, medical gaslighting, and related constructs have gained visibility in public discourse but remain inconsistently defined in scientific literature. Despite growing research-often focused on specific diseases…

BACKGROUND: Limited information is available on malpractice claims against obstetricians and gynecologists in China. This study identifies risk factors associated with malpractice and explores the correlation between the hospital characteri…

BACKGROUND: Delay to diagnosis of endometriosis is an increasing problem. As it stands, the mean delay to diagnosis time is nine years. There is limited research exploring the perceptions of healthcare professionals regarding the diagnosis …

BACKGROUND: Poor care experiences are reported for premenstrual disorders, which may result in negative outcomes such as distress, reduced healthcare engagement, and delays to diagnosis. This research aimed to explore healthcare experiences…

BACKGROUND: Medicalization involves treating a normal biological process or behavior as a medical issue. Technological developments and media influence have accelerated the spread of medical discourse. All stages of a woman's life, from ado…

INTRODUCTION: Multimorbidity is a major challenge for healthcare systems. While multiple methods exist to measure it from electronic health records (EHRs), their relative performance for predicting hospital utilization is unclear. STUDY DES…

BACKGROUND: Low-value care is unnecessary care that contributes to inefficient use of health resources and constitutes a considerable proportion of healthcare expenditures worldwide. Factors contributing to patients' demand for low-value ca…

BACKGROUND: During the first year postpartum, about 25 per cent of Swedish women with severe perineal trauma (SPT), i.e., a third- or fourth-degree perineal laceration at childbirth, are unsatisfied with their healthcare contacts. Further, …

BACKGROUND: Early pregnancy loss (EPL) can have profound implications for physical and psychological health. In the UK, significant variation in service provision exists for women affected by EPL. There is very little guidance on what hospi…

BACKGROUND: Despite universal health insurance, South Korea has seen a sharp increase in the number of people enrolled in supplemental private health insurance (PHI) during the last decade. This study examined how private health insurance e…

BACKGROUND: Shared medical appointments, also known as group visits, are a feasible and well-accepted approach for women receiving antenatal care, yet the feasibility and efficacy of this approach for female-specific reproductive conditions…

BACKGROUND: The political instability, economic crisis, and devaluation of the national currency left Lebanese females suffering from a scarcity of oral contraceptive pills (OCPs). Therefore, we aimed to identify the incidence of OCPs short…

BACKGROUND: Chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) is complex and often requires multimodal management comprising of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments. To inform delivery of CNCP management, it is important to understand how c…

BACKGROUND: Early initiation of physical therapy (PT) has been associated with lower healthcare costs and utilization; however, these studies have been limited to single institutions or healthcare systems. Our goal was to assess healthcare …

BACKGROUND: A barrier to the uptake of robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) continues to be the perceived high costs. A lack of detailed costing information has made it difficult for public hospitals in particular to determine whether use of the …

BACKGROUND: One way in which care for pregnant and postpartum women living with long-term health conditions (LTCs) may be improved is through the adoption of standardised measures to provide evidence of health outcomes and wellbeing from th…

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to describe the profile of patients who sought a second medical opinion (SMO) on their therapeutic or diagnostic strategy using nationwide data from a French physician network dedicated to SMOs. METHOD…

BACKGROUND: Guidelines and quality indicators (for example as part of a quality assurance scheme) aim to improve health care delivery and health outcomes. Ideally, the development of quality indicators should be grounded in evidence-based, …

BACKGROUND: Rates of low-value care vary between hospitals in New South Wales, Australia. Understanding factors associated with this variation will help in understanding the drivers of low-value care and in planning initiatives to reduce lo…

BACKGROUND: The look-back period is needed to define baseline population for estimating incidence. However, short look-back period is known to overestimate incidence of diseases misclassifying prevalent cases to incident cases. The purpose …

BACKGROUND: One in three colon cancers are diagnosed as an emergency, which is associated with worse cancer outcomes. Chronic conditions (comorbidities) affect large proportions of adults and they might influence the risk of emergency prese…

BACKGROUND: Whether patients receive low-value hospital care (care that is not expected to provide a net benefit) may be influenced by unmeasured factors at the hospital they attend or the hospital's Local Health District (LHD), or the pati…