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In order to reduce patient no-show, the Israeli government is promoting legislation that will allow Health Plans to require a co-payment from patients when reserving an appointment. It is hoped that this will ...
The Israeli National Health Insurance Law provides permanent residents with a basket of healthcare services through non-profit public health insurance plans, independently of the individual’s ability to pay. S...
High and increasing drug prices have prompted the establishment of a broad range of cost-containment treatment policies in health systems globally. In 2012, the supplemental insurance program of a large Israel...
Passage of the National Health Insurance Law (NHIL) in 1995 marked a turning point in the history of the Israeli healthcare system, ensuring sustainable, high-quality medical care to all eligible Israeli resid...
The scientific literature, including several papers published in the IJHPR, has raised the issue of the spiraling cost of cancer treatment, including that of cancer drugs and other technologies such as gene an...
Health systems worldwide function in constantly changing local and global ecosystems. This is the result of economic, demographic, and technological changes, among others. In recent decades Israel has started ...
The outbreak of a new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) poses dramatic challenges to public health authorities worldwide. One measure put in place to contain the spread of the disease is self-quarantine of indivi...
The Israeli public health system has seen a steady decline in public trust and confidence, which has resulted in an increased rate of individuals holding private and commercial health insurance policies that a...
Different forms of public/private mix have become a central mode of the privatization of healthcare, in both financing and provision. The present article compares the processes of these public/private amalgams...
Uncertainty about intended and possible unintended side effects makes it important to evaluate changes following health policy decisions. A recent IJHPR article by Greenberg et al. evaluated changes in emergen...
The original article was published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2018 7:69
In 2015, mental health services were added to the Israeli National Health Insurance package of services. As such, these services are financed by the budget which is allocated to the Health Plans according to a...
The phenomenon of a patient missing a medical appointment without notification is called a “no-show”. In contrast, “non-utilized appointments” are a broader phenomenon including all appointments that didn’t oc...
The Israel Ministry of Health enacted regulations that aim to reduce private expenditure on healthcare services and mitigate social inequality. According to the modified rules, which went into effect in the se...
The study documents a direct relationship between individuals’ health and patterns of healthcare expenditure by isolating single-person households and creating a new reference group in which household healthca...
The Commentary to this article has been published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2019 8:87
Hip fractures increase the risks of mortality and major morbidity in the elderly. Hip fractures are associated with chronic pain, reduced mobility, disability and increasing dependence. We evaluated the direct...
Nissanholtz-Gannot and Yenkellevich (NGY) explore the impact of a 2010 amendment to the Israeli National Health Insurance Law that requires annual reporting of payments from pharmaceutical companies (PCs) to d...
The original article was published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2017 6:45
The frequency of visiting primary care providers and the duration of those visits varies substantially by patient demographics and across different developed countries. The significance of a cumulative measure...
The original article was published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2017 6:35
As coverage is expanded in health systems that rely on consumers to choose health insurance plans that best meet their needs, interest in whether consumers possess sufficient understanding of health insurance ...
The original article was published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2017 6:12
Prioritization of medical technologies requires a multi-dimensional view. Often, conflicting equity and efficiency criteria should be reconciled. The most dramatic manifestation of such conflict is in the prio...
There is a traditional tension in public policy between the maximization of welfare from given resources (efficiency) and considerations related to the distribution of welfare among the population and to socia...
Medical practice variation refers to differences in health service utilization among regions in the same country. It is used as a tool for studying health inequities.
Consumption of sugar causes tooth decay, overweight and obesity related morbidities. This paper in response to the Minister of Health’s request, provides estimates of the mortality, morbidity and health care c...
The Commentary to this article has been published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2017 6:32
In an article recently published in the IJHPR, Ginsberg and colleagues from Israel’s Public Health Services estimate the disease burden from airborne particulate matter in Israel. Using national data on the co...
The original article was published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2016 5:51
Worldwide, ambient air pollution accounts for around 3.7 million deaths annually. Measuring the burden of disease is important not just for advocacy but also is a first step towards carrying out a full cost-ut...
The Commentary to this article has been published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2016 5:63
Cancer drug expenditures have been increasing significantly in countries around the world. A recent paper in the IJHPR provides new knowledge and insights into this global phenomenon by analyzing how it is pla...
Modern drug therapy accounts for a major share of health expenditure and challenges public provider resources. The objective of our study was to compare drug expenditure trends for ten major drug classes over ...
As a frequent visitor to Israel, I am keenly aware of the concerns of many Israelis that limits in government funding is forcing a high proportion of the country’s medical care to be paid by private sources. F...
In a recent article in this journal Simon-Tuval, Horev and Kaplan argue that in order to improve the protection of consumers there might be a need to impose a threshold on the medical loss ratio (MLR) for volu...
The original article was published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2015 4:21
Private health expenditure in systems of national health insurance has raised concern in many countries. The concern is mainly about the accessibility of care to the poor and the sick, and inequality in use an...
Concern is growing over serious shortages in the nursing workforce and imbalance between supply and demand. Projections indicate that the demand for the nursing workforce will increase due to the aging populat...
Amir Shmueli assessed income-related disparities in healthcare and health in Israel, extending earlier studies that focused primarily on education, ethnic or geographic differences. The new analysis finds that...
The growth of the private health insurance sector in Western countries, which is characterized by information deficiencies and limited competition, necessitates the implementation of effective regulatory tools...
The Commentary to this article has been published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2016 5:3
A collaboration of medical professionals with economists and computer scientists involved in “market design” had led to the redesign of the clearinghouse assigning medical students to internships in Israel. Th...
Physicians in Israel are required to do an internship in an accredited hospital upon completion of the medical studies, and prior to receiving the medical license. For most students, the assignment is determin...
Much like waiting times for health services, the shortage of physicians and other health professionals poses a major health policy issue in many OECD countries. In this short commentary, I present indications ...
The ageing of the population across developed countries and beyond has increased the importance of examining multi-morbidity. The recent paper by Arbelle et al. [Isr J of Health Policy Res. 2014;3:29] on multi...
Waiting times for elective care are a major health policy issue in many developed countries. Recent empirical studies suggest that inequalities in waiting times by socioeconomic status are present within publi...
Income-related inequalities in health and in health services use pose a disturbing and challenging issue in health systems, which are based on social health insurance such as Israel.
Waiting time to receive medical care is a disturbing phenomenon in many healthcare systems. Furthermore, waiting times are usually distributed in the population in an inequitable way.
Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death, incurring huge resource costs in terms of treating morbidity and lost productivity. This paper estimates smoking attributable mortality (SAM) as healt...
The Erratum to this article has been published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 2016 5:5
Health care rationing has always been seen as a wicked problem, somehow special and not subject to the same rules of engagement as other policy areas. The article by Philip Sax makes a strong contribution by p...
Israel has a low density of professional nurses. New evidence suggests less than optimal hospital work environments may undermine efficient and effective delivery of nursing care and contribute to job dissatis...
Breech presentation is encountered in 3 to 4% of term pregnancies and has been a significant driver of the increased rate of cesarean deliveries over the last 4 decades. External cephalic version (ECV) is reco...
Factors which contribute to hospitalization of nursing home residents are multiple and complex. They include dimensions of the policy setting as well as patient management practices. In seeking interventions t...
Health policies tend to focus on improving the access to health care of persons of low-socioeconomic status to improve their health. This commentary argues that health policies directly directed at health and ...
This paper examines whether individuals facing the threat of poverty are curtailing their consumption of various goods and services in a given order and, if among the expenditures that are cut back, there are ...
Previous studies suggest that cancer-related interventions are valued by policy makers more favorably than interventions for other medical conditions, but the views of practicing physicians have not yet been a...
The private health insurance (commercial and supplementary health insurance) sector has undergone a revolutionary transformation in recent years, both in the number of individuals who own private plans, and in...
The well-designed, model-based cost-utility analysis by Ginsberg and colleagues provides useful information on the value for money of universal GBS screening in Israel. An extended application of the model-bas...
Does high defence spending limit the growth of public health investment? Using comparative data from 31 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010, we find little evidence that defence crowds out public health spend...