Definition of Health Services Research
"Health services research is the multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation that studies how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, health technologies, and personal behaviors affect access to healthcare, the quality and cost of healthcare, and ultimately our health and well-being."" (Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy, 10/2000). Its research domains are, individuals, populations, costs, and organizational factors that influence the availability and quality of care.
Inclusion criteria:
HSR projects must involve some component of research, i.e., evaluation, assessment, analysis or study. These projects may address, or be conducted for the purposes of understanding or improving, such areas as the following:
- Costs, cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit and other economic aspects of healthcare
- Patient and population health status/quality of life
- Outcomes of healthcare technologies/interventions
- Practice patterns and diffusion of technologies/interventions
- Quality assurance programs /techniques designed to test generalizable attributes
- Guidelines, standards and criteria for healthcare
- Patient compliance with treatment
- Need and demand for healthcare
- Availability and accessibility of healthcare
- Utilization of healthcare
- Patient preferences for treatments, providers, settings, etc.
- Organization and delivery of healthcare (e.g., managed care vs. fee-for-service)
- Healthcare workforce
- Financing of healthcare (e.g., public and private third-party payment, capitation)
- Healthcare administration and management
- Health education and patient instruction
- Health professions education
- Health planning and forecasting
- Legal and regulatory changes affecting the healthcare system (e.g., anti-trust laws)
- Data and information needed for health care decision making (e.g., report cards)
- Studies of whether new healthcare technologies/interventions (including RCTs) can produce a desired outcome in "real world settings" of general or routine clinical practice
Exclusion criteria:
- Projects that do not involve some component of research or evaluation (e.g., demonstration projects or health services delivery projects that do not involve evaluation)
- Studies of the efficacy of healthcare technologies/interventions within the confines of carefully managed clinical protocols and/or using narrowly defined patient groups or trained clinicians that are not likely to be duplicated in general or routine practice
- Studies of animals
