Morbidity pattern in patients attending an OPD clinic at a health subcenter in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir

A retrospective descriptive study was carried out at subcenter Abidal, Srinagar to assess morbidity pattern among the population who visited this center. Secondary data was taken and analyzed using Microsoft excel. Results showed female population more often visited the center. Among the majority of recorded cases acute infections and fevers, hypertension, musculoskeletal disorders and anemia were a major contributing ailment.

A Comparative Study To Analyze The Cost Of Maternal And Child Health programme At Primary Health Center In Ahmedabad, India.

Abstracts: Background: Cost studies are paramount for demonstrating how resources have been spent and identifying opportunities for more efficient use of resources. The aim of this study was to determine the unit cost of maternal and child health (MCH) programme provided at Primary Health Centers (PHCs) and to examine the variation in unit cost in different PHCs. Methodology: The present study was carried out in three PHCs of Ahmedabad district namely Sanathal, Nandej, and Uperdal, between 1 April, 2006 and 31 March, 2007. For estimating the cost of a health program, information on all the physical and human resources that were basic inputs to the PHC services were collected and grouped into two categories, non-recurrent (capital resources vehicles, buildings, etc.) and recurrent resources (salaries, drugs, vaccines, contraceptives, maintenance, etc.). To generate the required data, two types of schedules were developed, daily time schedule and PHC/SC (Subcenter) information schedule. Results: Unit cost for each contact of MCH beneficiaries was Rs. 54.87 at Sanathal PHC, Rs. 87.63 at Nandej PHC and Rs. 70.01 at Uperdal PHC. Conclusion: Even though maternal and child health services are free, utilization of these services at the health centres were low, particularly for delivery, leading to high unit costs.

Factors Related to the Medical Service Performance of Rural Health Sub-centers / 農村醫學 地域保健

OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to identify factors that affect medical service performance in rural health sub-centers and to develop a method to improve health sub-center performance that takes advantage of these insights. METHODS: This study included 1,242 South Korean health sub-centers that had been in operation at least since December 31, 2009 as units of analysis. After adjusting for population differences between areas, the performance of medical service among health sub-centers was analyzed according to medical services performed per person. We performed t-tests, ANOVA, Scheffe's tests and multiple regression analyses. RESULTS: The following were significant variables affecting the medical service performance of rural health sub-centers: number of hospitals and clinics, presence of community health practitioner posts, distance from health sub-centers to main public health centers, distance from health sub-centers to the nearest emergency medical facilities, and proportion of the local population aged 65 and over. In contrast, the proportion of the local population between ages 0-4 and the placement of public health doctors that had already completed their internship were not significant variables. CONCLUSIONS: The medical service performance of health sub-centers located in rural areas is significantly affected by local population and health care environment characteristics, and therefore, it is imperative to develop strategies to provide differentiated service based on these factors.

The Problems of Establishing Health Subcenters in Urban Areas

Since the implementation of the national medical insurance service in 1979, it has become necessary to reconsider medical services from the geographical point of view. As more medical professionals have been concentrated in the metropolitan and urban areas, publicly hired medical practitioners have been appointed to less populated regions (e.g., farms and fisheries) and public medical service has been reinforced. During the past 10 years, the government and the ruling parties have been dragged around by strikes and collective actions of medical organizations, who have been rather dissatisfied with the new policy, namely, the separation of dispensary from medical practice. In an attempt to hold such efforts into check, the government, who has lost its "pride as a leftist," saw the needs to implement the public medical service. Consequently, new regulations were focused on the expansion of both the quantity and shares in the medical service market of the public medical service, which can be directly controlled. The government has either misunderstood the needs for urban public medical service or diverted its underlying principles. Despite some studies that reported the financial loss of urban public medical service as unavoidable, the government established seven exemplary public medical services in November 2005. The inefficiencies of such medical service were first brought to the public attention by the municipal congress of Cheonan City. Moreover, there have been some cases of distorted medical practices in the Seoul area, caused by efforts to record amplified hours of services. Owing to the financial loss and lack of effectiveness of the public medical service, such wrongful actions have been well expected. The government should first institute the underlying concepts of public medical service. The current inefficient public medical service should be scrapped, if the purpose of such service is a "public service," per se. If the public medical service only fills blanks left out by private medical service, the current public institutions have to carry out their responsibilities. The needs for current public medical service should be addressed if the quality and details of such service is to remain inferior to private medical service and keeps wasting tax.

Determining the Location of Urban Health Sub-center According to Geographic Accessibility / 예방의학회지

Decentralization to local governments and amending of Health center Law are to promote the efforts of health planning at the level of local agencies. In the health facility planning, it is important to take into account that what to be built, where to be located, how far should be service area and so forth, because health facilities are immovable, and require capital as well as personnel and consumable supplies. The aim of our study, answering to the question of 'where to be located?`, is to determine the best location of urban health sub-center. At the local level, planning is the matter of finding the best location of specific facility, in relation to population needs. We confine the accessibility, which is basic to location planning, to geographic one. Location-Allocation Model is used to solve the problem where the location is to maximize geographic accessibility. To minimize the weighted travel distance, objective function, Rk= aijwidij is used. Distances are measured indirectly by map measure-meter with l:25,000 Suwon map, and each potential sites, 10 administrative Dongs in Kwonson Gu, Suwon, are weighted by each number of households, total population, maternal age group, child age group, old age group, Relief for the livelihood, and population/primary health clinics. we find that Kuwoon-Dong, Seodun-Dong, Seryu3-Dong, according the descending orders, are best sites which can minimize the weighted distance, and conclude that it is reasonable to determine the location of urban health sub-center among those sites.

Determinants Influencing the Utilization of the Rural Health Sub-centers / 예방의학회지

To analyze of determinants infuencing the utilization of the rural health sub-centers (HSCs), 116 of 144 HSCs in Kyoung Gi Do, were selected for this study. The self-administered questionnaire covering the environment and the characteristics of doctors working in the HSCs was sent to HSCs by mail. 105 questionnaires were returned of which 88 were completed and use in the study. The dependant variable was the total number of medical care visits to the HSCs from January 1, 1990 to March 31, 1990. Data was analyzed by multiple regression analysis. The results were as follows: First, the more time required to set from the HSCs to nearest hospital or clinic, the higher the utilization of the HSCs. Second, the more geographically accessible the HSCs was, the more utilization the HSCs. Third, the older of the HSCs doctors were, the more utilization of the HSCs. Fourth, the higher frequency of bus service from the HSCs to town, the more utilization of the HSCs. Fifth, the more time required from the HSCs to town, the more utilization of the HSCs. Therefore, the determinants influencing the utilization of the rural HSCs in Kyong-Gi Do, are mostly geographical accessibility of medical care.