A Tale of Two Inquiries: Sans Everything and Ely

The government acknowledged scandalously poor care of long‐stay patients in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in 1969. This followed the Ely Hospital inquiry, which emerged in the aftermath of revelations of abuse at seven hospitals described in Barbara Robb's book Sans Everything: A Case to Answer (1967). Allegations in Sans Everything and at Ely were similar. However, the inquiry committees which investigated, ‘disproved’ those in Sans Everything and upheld those at Ely. The Ely inquiry became pivotal to NHS policy reform for long‐stay mental illness and mental handicap hospitals, and for giving patients and their families a greater voice if they had concerns about inadequacies. This paper explains the relationship between Sans Everything and ‘Ely’ and analyses the impact of Robb's work—her high‐profile press campaign, networking, and determination to achieve improvement—which triggered revelations at Ely and elsewhere, and helped shape the course and constructive outcome of the Ely inquiry.     

Exploring Social Capital: as Concept and Practice in Australian Public Health Policies and Programs

Over the past twenty years interest has grown in the concept of social capital in international and Australian public policy. We explore how social capital is understood as a concept and used in practice for guiding policy development and program delivery in South Australian public health programs. The empirical research compared policy makers’ and practitioners’ understandings of social capital and how theories about social capital and health inequality were translated into practice in three case study projects. It found that there are shifting discourses between social capital and related concepts, including community capacity building, and social inclusion/exclusion. Policy makers reported less use of the concept of social capital in favour of social inclusion/exclusion reflecting changing political and policy environments where terms come into favour and then go out of fashion. In this transition period the two terms are often used interchangeably although there are some conceptual points of difference.     

我国卫生检疫法律法规与国际接轨刍议

新修订的《国际卫生条例》(IHR)于2005年提交第58届世界卫生大会审议通过,并于2006年1月1日起正式实施。作为公共卫生方面唯一的一部国际法,对世界卫生组织(WHO)所有成员国均具有约束力。本文对“新条例”与检疫法及实施细则中的定义进行比较,并对其中一些较为重要的定义进行具体分析,旨在找出两者之间存在的差异,对其更好的与国际接轨提出一些个人的意见。     

卫生行政强制执行模式若干问题探析

卫生行政强制执行是国家卫生行政管理活动中一项重要制度,它对于保障卫生执法权有效运作,保障人民群众的健康利益和生命安全具有十分重要的意义。在卫生强制执行制度运行中,发现还存在着卫生行政强制执行前告诫不到位、程序显失公平、效率不高等许多需要完善的方面,对推行卫生强制执行前告诫制度、合理划分卫生行政强制执行权的行使、通过公布违法事实促使相对人自觉履行处罚等,通过制度模式因素影响卫生强制执行的发展进行初步探讨,以促进卫生行政强制执行更好的成为卫生行政执法的有力武器。     

卫生法地位研究

卫生法是否为独立的法律部门,是卫生法学研究的热点问题。本文在对划分法律部门的目的、意义和标准重新构思的基础,认为卫生法在职能、调整对象和调整方法上都不足以成为一个独立的法律部门。尽管作为独立的卫生法法律部门难以成立,但完全可以形成一个以卫生法律规范和卫生法律问题为研究对象的独立、综合的卫生法学学科。     

警察职业特点与警察心理应激反应及警察身心健康的探究

警察职业特点所带来的心理应激反应对警察身心健康的影响较大,从某种程度讲,如果没有妥善的应对之策,它将对我们的公安工作产生巨大的负面影响。因此,从警察这一特殊职业群体的特点入手,分析警察心理应激反应的特点及其危害性,从而有助于解决此类问题的对策。     

Reimbursement schemes for hospitals, malpractice liability, and intrinsic motivation

We develop a simple multi-task principal-agent model to analyze the interplay between optimal reimbursement schemes for hospitals and liability rules (basic model). We then extend our model and assume that the hospital is intrinsically motivated to exert positive effort for quality and cost reduction. This effort, however, is biased towards quality. Moreover, the intrinsic motivation may be crowded out by monetary incentives. In such a setting, we find that a pure prospective payment system (PPS) that has become widespread in recent years can only be optimal in the unlikely case where malpractice liability holds hospitals fully responsible for expected harm. For other cases, we confirm the prejudice that PPS may lead to inefficiently low quality. Then, the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) system is superior if the intrinsic motivation is high and relatively little biased towards quality, whereas mixed systems should be chosen otherwise. Our model sheds light on why countries like the USA with a tough liability system haven been less reluctant to switch from FFS to PPS than Germany, for instance.     

TRIPS-Plus Free Trade Agreements and Access to Medicines

The battle over access to essential medicines revolves around the rights to issue compulsory licenses and to manufacture and export generic versions of brand name drugs to expand access. Global brand name pharmaceutical firms have sought to ration access to medicines and have used their economic and political clout to shape United States trade policy. They have succeeded in getting extremely restrictive TRIPS-Plus, and even US-Plus, intellectual property provisions into regional and bilateral free trade agreements. Asymmetrical power relations continue to shape intellectual property policy, reducing the amount of leeway that poorer and/or weaker states have in devising regulatory approaches that are most suitable for their individual needs and stages of development. While the overall trend is disturbing, some recent activities in the World Health Organization and evidence of greater unity behind health-based TRIPs flexibilities provide some grounds for cautious optimism.