ABSTRACT
Background: specifying the determinants of healthcare expenditure is one of the most important challenges in the health sector. The current study was aimed to assess factors affecting government health care expenditure in Iran
Methods: to identify short-term and long-term determinants of healthcare expenditure in Iran during 1971-2007, Auto Regressive Distributive Lag [ARDL] bound testing approach to co integration was used. The explanatory variables were
defined into economic, demographic and supply side categories. The data were collected from the official websites of the Iranian Statistics Centre, Central Bank of Iran, and the Ministry of Health
Results: we found health care expenditures as necessary goods in both short-term and long-term. In long-term, per capita income [Beta = 0.815, P-value = 0.033], elderly population [Beta = - 1.790, P-value < 0.001], and physician density [Beta = 3.204, P-value = 0.004] had effect on health care expenditure. In short-term per capita income [Beta = 0.577, P-value = 0.026] was the only factor that significantly affected health care expenditure
Conclusion: Government health expenditure is necessary goods in both short and long run. Thus governmental health care expenditure does should grow proportional to increase in national income. This could result to decrease in out of pocket payment
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Efficiency evaluation of universities and faculties is one of the tools that help managers to identify the departments' strengths and weakness. The main objective of the present research was to measure and compare the technical efficiency of Shiraz school of medicine departments using Data Envelopment Analysis [DEA] technique
Methods: This cross-sectional and retrospective study was performed on clinical and non-clinical departments in research and education domains over the period of 2006 to 2011. Different inputs and outputs were considered for research and educational domain separately. Efficiency was measured based on the observed optimal performance
Results: Findings showed that pathology and anatomy departments achieved the score of 100 in technical efficiency in education during 2006 to 2011. During this period, parasitology, psychiatric and pediatrics department's achieved the score of 100 for technical efficiency in research domain. The lowest mean of relative educational efficiency belonged to orthopedic department; as to relative research efficiency, the lowest mean was shown in orthopedics and genetics departments. The mean technical efficiency of non-medical departments in education and research domain was 91.93 and 76.08, respectively, while the mean technical efficiency of the clinical department in educational and research fields was 91.02 and 82.23, respectively
Conclusion: Using multiple input and output in DEA technique provided a comprehensive evaluation of efficiency in Shiraz school of medicine departments. The DEA could successfully estimate the technical efficiency of the departments in research and educational fields. Moreover, the deficiency in each department was found; this could help them to plan for improvement
Subject(s)
Efficiency , Cross-Sectional Studies , Retrospective Studies , ResearchABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Brain stroke is the second most important events that lead to disability and morbidity these days. Although, stroke is important, there is no treatment for curing this problem. Nowadays, cell therapy has opened a new window for treating central nervous system disease. In some previous studies the Mesenchymal stem cells and neural stem cells. In this study, we have designed an experiment to assess the combination cell therapy (Mesenchymal and Neural stem cells) effects on brain stroke. METHOD AND MATERIALS: The Mesenchymal stem cells were isolated from adult rat bone marrow and the neural stem cells were isolated from ganglion eminence of rat embryo 14 days. The Mesenchymal stem cells were injected 1 day after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) and the neural stem cells transplanted 7 day after MCAO. After 28 days, the neurological outcomes and brain lesion volumes were evaluated. Also, the activity of Caspase 3 was assessed in different groups. RESULT: The group which received combination cell therapy had better neurological examination and less brain lesion. Also the combination cell therapy group had the least Caspase 3 activity among the groups. CONCLUSIONS: The combination cell therapy is more effective than Mesenchymal stem cell therapy and neural stem cell therapy separately in treating the brain stroke in rats.