Editorial

Abstract

This issue is an eclectic one, with a wide range of topics and geographical coverage. The first three articles concern management strategy: firstly, Orvik explores strategy for “radical organizational change” in a university hospital; secondly, Hassanain et al. utilize “lean” methods to improve efficiency in operating rooms in hospitals in Saudi Arabia; and thirdly, Abdi and Ravaghi investigate the implementation of “root cause analysis” in Iranian hospitals. The next four articles concern staff and patients. The fourth, by Nguyen, Duong and Vu, examines job satisfaction in district hospitals in northern Vietnam; the fifth, by Thanh and Rapoport, analyses differences in health service utilization in Canada by those who do, and those who do not, have a regular doctor; the sixth, by Erdem and Atalay, looks at how health system reform (“transformation”)has affected how resident physicians view the medical profession, in Turkey; and the seventh, by Bhatnagar et al., explores primary health care workers' views of motivating factors operative at various levels within the system, in two Nigerian states. Turning to the “online” section, the eighth article, by Arredondo, Duarte and Cuadra, asks what Latin America can learn from their Mexican study of epidemiological and financial indicators of hypertension in older adults. The ninth, by Salas-Vallina, Alegre and Fernandez, considers happiness at work in terms of organizational learning and “organizational citizenship.” The tenth, by Matejic, looks at reconfiguration of acute hospital care in “post-socialist” Serbia. The eleventh, by Littlejohns et al., analyses the setting of standards and the monitoring of quality in the English NHS, 1999–2013, and detect a classic case of goal conflict. The twelfth, by Shin et al., analyse the effect of “per diem” payment on length-of-stay and costs, in a palliative care pilot project in part of Korea. The thirteenth, by Reshmi, Sreekumaran and Unnikrishnan, reviews community-based health insurance in south Asia. The final article addresses a very different topic - the cancer formulary review in Canada, whereby Wranik et al. ask if centralization can improve the use of economic evaluation.