Articles

A health in all policies approach to promote active, healthy lifestyle in Israel

In December 2011, Israel launched the National Program to Promote Active, Healthy Lifestyle, an inter-ministerial, intersectoral effort to address obesity and its contribution to the country’s burden of chroni...

Authors: Yannai Kranzler, Nadav Davidovich, Yonina Fleischman, Itamar Grotto, Daniel S Moran and Ruth Weinstein

Are non-attenders a concern for primary care practice?

The article by Eshel et al. describes major differences, in terms of demography and health status, between elderly patients who did and those who did not visit primary care physicians for general health check-ups...

Authors: Vladimir Khanassov, Isabelle Vedel and Howard Bergman

The challenges and rewards of engaging a skeptical public

Findings published in this issue suggest that a substantial subset of the Israeli public generally trusts government, yet is determined to make their own judgments about the need for precautionary action in ce...

Authors: Lori Uscher-Pines and Arthur L Kellermann

Analysis of public responses to preparedness policies: the cases of H1N1 influenza vaccination and gas mask distribution

During several months in 2009–2010, the Israeli population was asked to take part in two preparedness programs: Acquisition of gas masks against a potential chemical-warfare attack, and vaccination against the...

Authors: Baruch Velan, Valentina Boyko, Gilead Shenhar, Liat Lerner-Geva and Giora Kaplan

Models of professional regulation: institutionalizing an agency relationship

The regulation of medical practice can historically be understood as a second-level agency relationship whereby the state delegated authority to professional bodies to police the primary agency relationship be...

Authors: Carolyn Hughes Tuohy

Annual acknowledgement of manuscript reviewers

The Editors of Israel Journal of Health Policy Research would like to thank all reviewers, both external and Editorial Board Members, who have contributed to the journal since its inception, and whose valuable su...

Authors: Bruce Rosen and Avi Israeli

Regulatory tasks of national medical associations - international comparison and the Israeli case

In many countries, NMAs, along with other stakeholders, play a part in the regulation of physicians. The purpose of this paper is to compare and explain the level of involvement of NMAs in physician regulation...

Authors: Malke Borow, Baruch Levi and Michelle Glekin

Characteristics of the elderly who do not visit primary care physicians

Health care quality indicators encourage outreach programs for screening the elderly who do not voluntarily visit their primary care physician (PCP). The characteristics of this population, however, have never...

Authors: Nira Eshel, Raanan Raz, Gabriel Chodick and Michal Guindy

Should Israel screen all mothers-to-be to prevent early-onset of neonatal group B streptococcal disease? A cost-utility analysis

In Israel, an average of 37 children are born each year with sepsis and another four with meningitis as a result of Group B Streptococcal (GBS) disease. Israel currently only screens mothers with defined risk ...

Authors: Gary M Ginsberg, Arthur I Eidelman, Eric Shinwell, Emilia Anis, Reuven Peyser and Yoram Lotan

Adjusting health expenditure for military spending and interest payment: Israel and the OECD countries

Compared to OECD countries, Israel has a remarkably low percentage of GDP and of government expenditure spent on health, which are not reflected in worse national outcomes. Israel is also characterized by a re...

Authors: Amir Shmueli and Avi Israeli

How to provide and pay for long term care of an aging population is an international concern

As populations age, most industrialized nations are seeking to review the structure for their long term care programs with the goal of allocating better limited public resources to meet expanding needs. In thi...

Authors: Marsha Gold

The Long-Term Care Insurance Program in Israel: solidarity with the elderly in a changing society

The Long-Term Care Insurance Program (LTCIP) in Israel is a social security program administered by the National Insurance Institute (NII) since 1988. LTCIP focuses on home-based personal care services. Differ...

Authors: Sharon Asiskovitch

Interventions for reducing readmissions – are we barking up the right tree?

Readmission reduction is at the focus of health care systems worldwide in efforts to improve efficiency across care settings. Yet, setting targets for readmission reduction is complicated due to inconsistencie...

Authors: Ran D Balicer, Efrat Shadmi and Avi Israeli

The effect of clinical interventions on hospital readmissions: a meta-review of published meta-analyses

The economic impact and ease of measurement of all-cause hospital readmission rates (HRR) have led to the current debate as to whether they are reducible, and whether they should be used as a publicly reported...

Authors: Jochanan Benbassat and Mark I Taragin

The journal's first year of publication and the challenges ahead

The Israel Journal of Health Policy Research (IJHPR) seeks to promote intensive intellectual interactions among scholars and practitioners from Israel and other countries regarding all aspects of health policy an...

Authors: Avi Israeli and Bruce Rosen

Physician job satisfaction as a public health issue

In Hirschman’s classic formulation, physicians can signal discontent with their conditions of work by “exiting” (leaving the profession or not entering it in the first place) or by giving “voice” to their conc...

Authors: Richard L Kravitz

Work satisfaction, quality of life, and leisure time of neonatology fellows and senior neonatologists in Israel

To examine work satisfaction, quality of life, and leisure time of neonatology fellows and senior neonatologists in Israel.

Authors: Michael Moshe, Zvi H Perry, Liat Salzer, Ehud Zemora and Asaf Toker

A first step in determining appropriate amounts of obstetric anesthesia work

Ginosar, et al. describe a new performance indicator, the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index, to represent the current amount of obstetric anesthesia work done daily at each of 25 Israeli hospitals. The authors ...

Authors: Swarup S Varaday and Barbara L Leighton

Comparison of the obstetric anesthesia activity index with total delivery numbers as a single denominator of workload demand in Israeli maternity units

Obstetric anesthesia workload demand in Israel has increased due to both an increase in the requests for labor analgesia and a marked increase in the cesarean delivery rate. We propose a new workload-driven pe...

Authors: Yehuda Ginosar, Alex Ioscovich, Charles Weissman, Ronit Calderon-Margalit and Carolyn F Weiniger

Function or outcomes based performance for public health systems?

This commentary considers the merits of exploring different public health delivery systems among developed countries to consider which models are most effective. It challenges the conventional focus on deliver...

Authors: Fiona Sim

From service provision to function based performance - perspectives on public health systems from the USA and Israel

If public health agencies are to fulfill their overall mission, they need to have defined measurable targets and should structure services to reach these targets, rather than offer a combination of ill-targete...

Authors: Douglas F Scutchfield, Ehud Miron and Richard C Ingram

Priority setting: the importance of incorporating opportunity costs

This article is a comment on Ofra Golan and Paul Hansen’s framework for health technology prioritization that they suggest could be developed and used by the committee selecting new technologies for Israel’s h...

Authors: Ole Frithjof Norheim

Which health technologies should be funded? A prioritization framework based explicitly on value for money

Deciding which health technologies to fund involves confronting some of the most difficult choices in medicine. As for other countries, the Israeli health system is faced each year with having to make these di...

Authors: Ofra Golan and Paul Hansen

Improving health outcomes: innovation, coverage, quality and adherence

The Israeli health system has made considerable progress in reducing deaths amenable to medical care but has more to do. This commentary describes how progress in this area results from innovation, coverage, q...

Authors: Martin McKee and Clara K Chow

Measuring healthcare preparedness: an all-hazards approach

In a paper appearing in this issue, Adini, et al. describe a struggle familiar to many emergency planners—the challenge of planning for all scenarios. The authors contend that all-hazards, or capabilities-base...

Authors: David E Marcozzi and Nicole Lurie

Mortality rates in Israel from causes amenable to health care, regional and international comparison

Mortality from causes amenable to health care is a valuable indicator of quality of the health care system, which can be used to assess inter-regional differences and trends over time. This study investigates ...

Authors: Nehama Goldberger and Ziona Haklai

Evidence-based support for the all-hazards approach to emergency preparedness

During the last decade there has been a need to respond and recover from various types of emergencies including mass casualty events (MCEs), mass toxicological/chemical events (MTEs), and biological events (pa...

Authors: Bruria Adini, Avishay Goldberg, Robert Cohen, Daniel Laor and Yaron Bar-Dayan

The internet, teenagers, and sexual health information: a cautionary tale

Although most Israeli teenagers have access to the web and many have used the internet to obtain health information, they do not have access to accurate and complete information about contraceptives on Hebrew ...

Authors: Freya Lund Sonenstein

Quality of online health information about oral contraceptives from Hebrew-language websites

The Internet is a frequently used source of health information. Adolescents in particular seem to be receptive to online health information (OHI) and often incorporate such information in their decision-making...

Authors: Yehuda Neumark, Lior Flum, Catalina Lopez-Quintero and Ronny Shtarkshall

Know your patient: psychological drivers of decision making

This is a commentary on “Attitudes of legal guardians of ventilated ICU patients toward the process of decision making associated with invasive nonlife-saving procedures” by Michael Kuniavsky, Freda DeKeyser G...

Authors: Linda Emanuel

The legal guardians' dilemma: Decision making associated with invasive non-life-saving procedures

ICU patients frequently undergo non-life-saving invasive procedures. When patient informed consent cannot be obtained, legal guardianship (LG), often from a close relative, may be required by law. The objectiv...

Authors: Michael Kuniavsky, Freda DeKeyser Ganz, David M Linton and Sigal Sviri

Endocrine disrupting chemicals and the growth of environmental health in Israel

This commentary addresses the article by Berman, et al. on reproductive health trends in Israel potentially related to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and on associated health policy decisions in Israel ...

Authors: Henry Falk

Trends in reproductive health in Israel: implications for environmental health policy

Nearly two decades ago, researchers first reported that endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment were affecting reproductive health in the general population. The purpose of this article is to examine...

Authors: Tamar Berman, Hagai Levine, Ronni Gamzu and Itamar Grotto

Doctor-patient communication in the e-health era

The digital revolution will have a profound impact on how physicians and health care delivery organizations interact with patients and the community at-large. Over the coming decades, face-to-face patient/doct...

Authors: Jonathan P Weiner

Providing cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses to patients: The patient’s perspective, a cross sectional study

Today patients can consult with their treating physician by cell phone or e-mail. These means of communication enhance the quality of medical care and increase patient satisfaction, but they can also impinge o...

Authors: Roni Peleg and Elena Nazarenko

Viewing second opinions in terms of recent developments in patient choice

Patient choice has become an increasingly visible part of publicly funded health care systems. Since the 1990s, many individuals have gained the ability to select their insurer in social health insurance funde...

Authors: Richard B Saltman

Orthopedic surgeons’ and neurologists’ attitudes towards second opinions in the Israeli healthcare system: a qualitative study

Second opinion is a treatment ratification tool that may critically influence diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Second opinions constitute one of the largest expenditures of the supplementary health insuran...

Authors: Geva Greenfield, Joseph S Pliskin, Shlomo Wientroub and Nadav Davidovitch

How society treats smoking

Bans on smoking in bars and other public places can make an important contribution to public health. However, for these bans to be effective, they require broad public support. Qualitative studies of the attit...

Authors: Gregory N Connolly

Challenges for the smoking ban in Israeli pubs and bars: analysis guided by the behavioral ecological model

The latest amendment to the ban on smoking in public places in Israel was implemented in 2007, adding pubs and bars (P&B) to the list of public places in which smoking is prohibited. However, smoking in most P...

Authors: Orna Baron-Epel, Carmit Satran, Vicki Cohen, Anat Drach-Zehavi and Melbourne F Hovell

Physicians’ views of performance reports: grading the graders

Quality measurement and feedback programs have become widespread and are looked upon as a cornerstone of quality improvement efforts. Often, such programs are used to motivate consumer choice through public re...

Authors: Bruce E Landon

Monitoring quality in Israeli primary care: The primary care physicians' perspective

Since 2000, Israel has had a national program for ongoing monitoring of the quality of the primary care services provided by the country's four competing non-profit health plans. Previous research has demonstr...

Authors: Rachel Nissanholtz-Gannot and Bruce Rosen

Beyond the trends: policy considerations in psychiatric rehabilitation

Beyond the trends in the use of rehabilitative services in response to a new policy and its fiscal incentives, it is important to consider the effectiveness and quality of the services provided to individuals ...

Authors: Howard H Goldman and Richard G Frank

Trends in the use of rehabilitation services in the community by people with mental disabilities in Israel; the factors involved

In 2001, the Rehabilitation of the Mentally Disabled Law was implemented, defining a basket of rehabilitation services to which people with mental disabilities are entitled.

Authors: Tzipi Hornik-Lurie, Nelly Zilber and Yaacov Lerner

Review essay: politics, power, and universal health care by Stuart Altman and David Schachtman

Authors: David Chinitz

Continuity of care: important, but only the first step

Continuity of care is critical to achieving the best outcomes, especially for patients with chronic conditions. Israel’s strong commitment to primary care as a central organizing concept of the health system, ...

Authors: Janet M Corrigan

The association between continuity of care in the community and health outcomes: a population-based study

The study goal was to assess indices of continuity of care in the primary care setting and their association with health outcomes and healthcare services utilization, given the reported importance of continuit...

Authors: Jacob Dreiher, Doron S Comaneshter, Yael Rosenbluth, Erez Battat, Haim Bitterman and Arnon D Cohen

National patient safety initiatives: Moving beyond what is necessary

Ilan and Donchin have compared Israel and Canada's experiences in setting a national patient safety agenda. We broaden this comparison to include the U.S. experience, and suggest that there are three additiona...

Authors: Eyal Zimlichman and David W Bates

Creating patient safety capacity in a nation's health system: A comparison between Israel and Canada

Injuries to patients by the healthcare system (i.e., adverse events) are common and their impact on individuals and systems is considerable. Over the last decade, extensive efforts have been made worldwide to ...

Authors: Roy Ilan and Yoel Donchin

Tackling obesity requires efficient government policies

Changes in food supply and eating habits, combined with a dramatic fall in physical activity, have made obesity a global epidemic. Across OECD countries, one in two adults is currently overweight and one in si...

Authors: Michele Cecchini and Franco Sassi

Giving oocytes to women in need: permitted, forbidden, or pressured? A commentary

There can be no starker contrast in egg donation than between Austria, where it is forbidden, and Israel, where it is encouraged to the extent that some Israeli women go abroad in order to obtain these preciou...

Authors: Françoise Shenfield