Author: Liu

By defining what services, patients, and providers are eligible for payment, a provider payment system also inherently defines the degree of competitiveness in the market as well as the market boundaries. If the physician payments restrict which patients or services a doctor will be reimbursed for treating, this has important implications for incentives. Similarly, incentives…

Introduction There are many ways that health-care providers can be paid. In India, government physicians are paid a salary and in Canada physicians are generally paid according to a government-regulated fee schedule. In the Netherlands, however, office-based physicians receive capitated payments for much of their revenue. Similar variations are seen in payments to hospitals, which…

The large amount of circulating antibodies are fixed on the red blood cells facilitating the erythrophagocytosis, resulting in anemia. It also activates the complement system and cytokines, provoking increased vascular permeability. One of the classical anatomopathological lesions is a vasculitis with perivascular infiltrate of mononuclear cells and fibrinoid deposits on the walls of the blood…

Amebiasis is an infection caused by the protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica. In contrast, nonpathogenic ameba that infect humans include E. dispar and E. moshkovskii (both morphologically identical to and easily confused with E. histolytica), E. coli, E. hartmanni, and Endolimax nana. Dientamoeba fragilis and E. polecki have been associated with diarrhea and E. gingivalis with…

Patients present with several days to weeks of gradual onset of abdominal pain and tenderness, diarrhea and occasionally bloody stools (Figure 3(a)). This is different from bacterial causes of dysentery, where patients usually only have 1 to 2 days of symptoms. Surprisingly, fever is present in only the minority of patients with amebic colitis. Colonic…

The typical patient with an amebic liver abscess in the United States is an immigrant, usually a Hispanic male, 20–40 years old, who presents with fever, right upper quadrant pain, leukocytosis, abnormal serum transaminases and alkaline phosphatase, and a defect on hepatic imaging study. Roughly 90% of patients with liver abscess are males. The abscess…

Control of CD began to be institutionalized in the 1960s in the form of national campaigns implemented in Venezuela and several countries in the Southern Cone. In 1991 the Southern Cone Initiative, initiated by the Health Ministers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, allowed national control activities to be maintained, expanded, or instituted…

CD has two clinical phases: acute and chronic. The acute phase is undiagnosed in more than 90% of vectorborne cases. It can be symptomatic, oligosymptomatic, or asymptomatic. Some of the most frequent symptoms are febrile syndrome of long duration and lymphadenopathy. Some typical, though less frequent, symptoms are: Romana’s sign (unilateral bipalpebral edema), inoculation chagoma,…

These insects belong to the order Hemiptera, family Reduviidae, and subfamily Triatominae. They are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions on the American continent, from south of the United States down to the northern and central regions of Chile and Argentina. Sixteen genera and more than 130 species have been described, as reported by…

PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act): Focus on Iteration: While PDSA is excellent for process improvements and testing changes in small cycles, it may not be as effective for a large-scale organizational restructuring. The iterative nature of PDSA may not provide the comprehensive structure needed for a sweeping change like flattening a top-heavy organizational structure. Lack of Emphasis on…