Mistreatment during Childbirth: Impact on Maternal Outcomes and Importance of Provider Perspectives

Background: Dying in childbirth is one of the most common causes of death for women. While maternal mortality rates, defined as deaths per 100,000 live births, have been steadily dropping in most countries worldwide, maternal mortality rates have doubled in the United States in the last twenty years. This commentary examines the various contributing factors to this trend. Methods: A literature review was performed using the keywords: maternal mortality, United States, disrespectful maternity care, obstetric violence, provider perspectives, and disparities. Maternal mortality statistics were obtained from the World Health Organization website. Results: Medical factors associated with maternal mortality include increased maternal age and cardiovascular conditions. Social factors include barriers to healthcare access, delays in receiving medical care, reduction in reproductive health services in some states, and non-obstetrical deaths such as accidents, domestic violence, and suicide. Racial inequities and disparities of care are reflected in higher maternal mortality rates for minorities and people of color. Disrespectful maternity care or obstetric violence has been reported worldwide as a factor in delay of lifesaving obstetrical care and reluctance by a pregnant person to access the healthcare system. About one in five US women has reported experiencing mistreatment, varying from verbal abuse to lack of privacy, from coerced procedures to neglect during childbirth. Conclusion: This commentary highlights the importance of inclusion of providers in research on respectful maternity care. Provider burnout, moral distress, limited time, and burden of clinical responsibilities are known challenges to respectful and comprehensive medical care. The association of disrespectful care with poor maternal outcomes needs to be studied. Exploring root causes of disrespectful childbirth care can empower nurses, midwives, and physicians to improve their environment and find solutions to reduce a potential cause of maternal mortality.

Selection of Third-party Logistics Provider for Agricultural Products Based on System Comprehensive Evaluation

Through the analysis on the meanings and features as well as the ad- vantages of the third-party logistics for agricultural products, the quantization index system for the selection of third-party logistics providers for agricultural products was constructed based on the system comprehensive evaluation theory. Analytic hierar- chy process （AHP） was used to determine the weight of the index system of each level, and AHP and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method were used to determine the selection steps for the third-party logistics providers for agricultural products. The method was proved to be scientific and reasonable through calculation examples.

品质 从服务做起——iCan Provider Suite打造新服务

今天,将任务关键型服务及应用进行外包的呼声已经越来越高。当iCan SP推出的ican Provider Suite今年6月在国外发布、9月在国内全面发布以来,业界对此服务管理解决方案并没有太多的认识。在同CA公司亚洲区资深副总裁段践冰的交谈中,终于能从中一窥iCan Provider Suite方案的端倪。这套服务管理解决方案提出了一个全新的理念,它致力于提升服务商和IT部门的竞争力,而且也把无形的服务透明化、具体化了。

A Study on the Multi-Task Incentive Mechanism for the Service Provider

Both conflict and asymmetric information exist betweenthe telecom operators and the service provider,and result in illegal behaviors of the service provider.The relationship between the telecom operators andthe service provider is classical multi-task principalagentrelationship. The multi-task incentive for theservice provider is considered in the design of theprincipal-agent incentive contract, and it is necessaryto add the multi-task incentive to the serviceproviders through the analysis of the risk costs andthe agency costs of this problem.

Mining and Modelling the Dynamic Patterns of Service Providers in Cellular Data Network Based on Big Data Analysis

Understanding the dynamic traffic and usage characteristics of data services in cellular networks is important for optimising network resources and improving user experience.Recent studies have illustrated traffic characteristics from specific perspectives,such as user behaviour,device type,and applications.In this paper,we present the results of our study from a different perspective,namely service providers,to reveal the traffic characteristics of cellular data networks.Our study is based on traffic data collected over a five-day period from a leading mobile operator's core network in China.We propose a Zipf-like model to characterise the distributions of the traffic volume,subscribers,and requests among service providers.Nine distinct diurnal traffic patterns of service providers are identified by formulating and solving a time series clustering problem.Our work differs from previous related works in that we perform measurements on a large quantity of data covering 2.2 billion traffic records,and we first explore the traffic patterns of thousands of service providers.Results of our study present mobile Internet participants with a better understanding of the traffic and usage characteristics of service providers,which play a critical role in the mobile Internet era.

Perception of Adolescents on the Attitudes of Providers on Their Access and Use of Reproductive Health Services in Delta State, Nigeria

This paper examines the perception of adolescents on the attitudes of providers on their access and use of reproductive health services (ARHS) in Delta State, Nigeria, with a view of assessing the impact of providers’ attitude on the use of adolescents’ reproductive health services in Delta State. The study adopted a survey design to collect primary data using questionnaires and focus group discussions (FGDs) from adolescents in a sample of schools. A sample size of 1500 respondents was taken from 12 schools in six Local Government Areas in three Senatorial Districts in Delta State, Nigeria. The locations of the schools were such that six each were in rural and urban communities respectively. The result from the study was that unfriendly attitudes of providers which keep adolescents waiting, inadequate duration of consultations, judgmental attitudes of some providers, lack of satisfactory services provision and lack of confidentiality will put off adolescents from accessing and using adolescents’ reproductive health services irrespective of their sex, age, class, religion, residence, ethnic group, parents’ education or income levels. The paper concludes that medical personnel take all these issues very seriously when dealing with adolescents to enhance access and use adolescents’ reproductive health services in Delta State and indeed Nigeria.

Assessment of the Contributions of Private Provider Engagement in Tuberculosis Case Finding and Notification in South West Nigeria

Introduction: Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of mortalities attributable to an infectious disease. In a private sector-driven health system such as Nigeria, the private health providers are very important stakeholders in tuberculosis diagnosis and management. Unfortunately, there are few data on the level of contribution of these private health providers to the case finding and notification of tuberculosis in Nigeria. Consequently, this study assessed the contribution of the private providers to the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis under the Global Fund Private Public Mix New Funding Model (2nd phase) grant (GF PPM NFM2) in the four implementing states of south west Nigeria. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis of the NFM2 programme implementation data collected between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020. Data was extracted from the routine registers such as the presumptive TB registers;treatment register of the private health facilities engaged for PPM activities between 2019 and 2020. The data was entered and analyzed using Microsoft excel package. The variables were summarized using appropriate charts and table. Results: Concerning the percentage contribution of the Global Fund Private Public Mix (GF PPM) grant to the total state TB case notification, majority of the implementing states show some progressive rise in the contribution of GF PPM to State TB case notification as the grant implementation progressed. Furthermore, at the initial period of the grant implementation, the health facilities seemed to have generated majority of the cases. However, as the grant implementation progressed, the PPMVs were responsible for the diagnosis of majority of the cases. Conclusion: As the grant progressed, there was a progressive increase in the number of presumptive TB cases as well as in the number of notified cases of tuberculosis attributable to private provider engagement.

Study on Task Assignment of Two-stage Multi-service Capability Port Logistics Service Providers

This paper mainly studies the problem of multi-task assignment of providers in port logistics service supply chain.As a core enterprise,port plays the role of logistics service integrator.With the continuous development of industrial integration,logistics service providers not only provide one kind of logistics service,but also develop into composite suppliers who capable of providing a variety of logistics services.This paper studies the task assignment problem of multi-service capability providers in the port logistics service supply chain.The two-stage logistics service provider task assignment model was built,which is based on the mixed evaluation method(including MOORA and FMEA)and the multi-objective planning method.Eventually,the effectiveness of the model method was verified by combining with an example.

Catalytic Desulfurization of n-Butyl-sulfide over HZSM-5 Zeolite in the Presence of a Hydrogen Provider

The catalytic desulfurization of a model organic sulfurous compound n-butyl-sulfide in a fixed bed microreactor is studied in the presence of catalyst and a hydrogen provider. The experimental results show that the appropriate reaction conditions are： a mixed catalyst of HZSM-5 zeolite and Co-Mo/Al2O3-TiO2, a reaction temperature of 300℃, atmosphere pressure, a feed speed of 50 mL/h and a mass hourly space velocity of 3.0 h^-1 A higher catalytic property and desulfurization efficiency of the mixed catalyst of HZSM-5 zeolite and Co-Mo/Al2O3-TiO2 is achieved. The adsorption and desulfurization efficiency of the FCC gasoline from Shenghua Refinery, which is affiliated to China University of Petroleum （East China）, is 53.0 %.

Knowledge of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) among healthcare providers: A cross-sectional study in Indonesia

Objective:To assess healthcare workers’knowledge of novel coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)in the early phase of the outbreak in Indonesia.Methods:A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 12 hospitals in Indonesia from March 6 to March 25,2020.Healthcare workers’knowledge on COVID-19 was assessed,and demographic data,workplace characteristics,and medical professional characteristics as well as the current local situation of COVID-19 were collected.To characterize determinants associated with knowledge,a logistic regression analysis was employed.Results:Out of 288 healthcare workers who completed the interview-assisted questionnaire,149(51.7%)respondents had a good knowledge.Nurses and other types of healthcare workers had lower odds of having good knowledge compared to doctors:adjusted odds ratio(aO R):0.38;95%CI:0.20-0.72 and aO R:0.31;95%CI:0.13-0.73,respectively.Compared to healthcare workers who had medical practice experience less than 5 years,those who had worked for more than 10 years had lower knowledge(a OR:0.43;95%CI:0.20-0.90).Healthcare workers who worked in the infection department had higher knowledge compared to those in the emergency room(aO R:14.33;95%CI:3.67-55.88).Conclusions:The knowledge of COVID-19 among surveyed healthcare workers was relatively low.The COVID-19 response in Indonesia will require further education and enhancement of the capacity of healthcare workers in the emergency room where COVID-19 patients may be treated the earliest.

Light-Weighted Decision Support Framework for Selecting Cloud Service Providers

Multi-criteria decision making(MCDM)is a technique used to achieve better outcomes for some complex business-related problems,whereby the selection of the best alternative can be made in as many cases as possible.This paper proposes a model,the multi-criteria decision support method,that allows both service providers and consumers to maximize their profits while preserving the best matching process for resource allocation and task scheduling.The increasing number of service providers with different service provision capabilities creates an issue for consumers seeking to select the best service provider.Each consumer seeks a service provider based on various preferences,such as price,service quality,and time to complete the tasks.In the literature,the problem is viewed from different perspectives,such as investigating how to enhance task scheduling and the resource allocation process,improve consumers’trust,and deal with network problems.This paper offers a novel model that considers the preferences of both service providers and consumers to find the best available service provider for each consumer.First,the model adopts the best-worst method(BWM)to gather and prioritize tasks based on consumers’and service providers’preferences.Then,the model calculates and matches similarities between the sets of tasks from the consumer’s side with the sets of tasks from the provider’s side to select the best service provider for each consumer using the two proposed algorithms.The complexity of the two algorithms is found to be O(n3).

Influential factors of healthcare provider resilience in disasters:A thematic analysis

Objective:To identify the influential factors of healthcare staff resilience in disasters.Methods:In this qualitative study,the influential factors of healthcare staff resilience in disasters were investigated through interviewing 20 experts.The interviews were conducted face-to-face,and MAXQDA software version 10 was used to organize the data and thematic analysis.Results:The participants included 5 medical emergency technicians,5 physicians,2 Red Crescent technicians,and 8 nurses.The main influential factors of healthcare providers’resilience were limited relief infrastructure,supportive empowerment,organizational capitals,and contradictory consequences.Other important factors were resource limitation,confusion and uncertainty,empowerment training,comprehensive support,human and value capital,social capital,physical capital,suffering,disability,calm,and excellence.Conclusion:Improving healthcare providers’resilience can be achieved by reducing uncertainty,providing the physical,economic,and human resources,strengthening motivation and comprehensive supports.It is suggested that disaster managers consider all identified dimensions to improve the resilience of healthcare providers to serve better in disasters.Moreover,researchers should study each dimension to provide profound knowledge regarding resilience in disasters.

Frequency of smoking cessation interventions from health care providers in Minnesota

Objective: There is strong evidence supporting the impact of health care provider advice on patients’ smoking behavior. This paper examines adult smoker reports of health care provider smoking cessation interventions. Design: The 2010 Minnesota Adult Tobacco Survey (MATS) is a random digit dial telephone survey with 7057 Minnesota adults. Both landline and mobile telephone samples were included. These samples were combined and weighted to represent the population of adults in Minnesota. Results: Among adult Minnesotans, 16.1% were current smokers, 80.9% reported seeing a health care provider in the past 12 months and 80.2% of those adults were asked if they smoke. Among smokers who saw any provider in the past 12 months, 94.4% reported they were asked about smoking and 71.8% were advised not to smoke. In contrast, 43.9% of smokers received referrals from a health care provider and among those, 37.5% were recommended medications and 24.8% were referred to a quit smoking program. Conclusion: Given the large body of evidence supporting cessation interventions by health care providers, the increase in use of electronic medical records and the availability and success of evidence-based cessation programs, efforts to improve rates of identifying and treating each tobacco user are needed. Further research is needed to explore how cessation intervention responsibilities can be shared among the clinical team and integrated into ongoing clinical care.

The Relationship between Size and Performance of Palestinian Water Service Providers

Studies investigating the relationship between size and performance of water service providers are abundant. Yet, this relationship has not been fully addressed in Palestinian water sector, particularly, after the issuance of water law 2014 which calls for merging water providers into large regional utilities. This research evaluates the significant effect of the size of Palestinian water service providers on non-revenue water, staff productivity, collection efficiency, average consumption, average price, operating and maintenance cost, working ratio, and gross profit. The multivariate analysis shows that there are significant differences in working ratio, non-revenue water, staff productivity, average price, and gross profit based on the size. On the other side, no significant differences have been found in average daily consumption, operating and maintenance cost per unit, and collection efficiency based on those providers’ size. The small service providers perform better in non-revenue water, staff productivity, and collection efficiency;wherein, large service providers are more profitable than small service providers. Implications of these findings by conducting further studies will add the value for better merging of the Palestinian water providers and the reforming process.

Hybrid Intelligent Approach for the Selection of Third-Party Reverse Logistics Provider under Uncertainty

A hybrid intelligent approach is proposed to help the decision maker to select the appropriate third-party reverse logistics provider. The following process is included: firstly,the evaluation team is established to determine the selection criteria and evaluate them by triangular fuzzy numbers; secondly,calculate the weight of criteria by the proposed hybrid algorithm integrating particle swarm optimization( PSO) and simulated annealing( SA); then, the performance evaluation for each supplier is predicted by the proposed self-feedback neural network( SFBNN) based on the historical data. A numerical example is also presented to interpret the methodology above.

Provider Backbone Transport Technology

The Metro Ethernet Forum(MEF) put forward the concept of Carrier Ethernet(CE) to improve Ethernet technology and make it a transmission convergence layer solution for Next Generation Network(NGN).Provider Backbone Transport(PBT) is the result of the enhancement and improvement of the early Ethernet technologies and it is the new version of CE implementation technology and standard which is promising.Through studying the PBT-related technologies,PBT network structure,PBT advantages as the transmission convergence layer solution and its trend of future development,it is concluded that PBT can be used as the preferred technology of the transmission convergence layer in the NGN,though there are some problems to be solved for PBT.

Identifying Service Needs from the Perspective of Service Providers—A Qualitative Study

The provision of high-quality medical care has become a key challenge in many countries. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that the early detection of chronic diseases can reduce mortality rates. Therefore, it is important to identify service needs which influence to participate in health screening. To date, little research has been conducted into the perspectives of service providers on this topic. In this preliminary study, we aimed to explore the perspectives of service providers who work in a community-based setting in order to identify perceived barriers to chronic disease screening and incentives which can increase participation rates. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 experienced health service providers from October 2017 to December 2017. Interviewees included physicians and community health representatives who had been working in a community-based health screening service for at least 3 years. The study identified several aspects of health screening services for chronic diseases that are in need of improvement, including a shortage of appropriate health service providers, inadequate attendance promoting measures, a lack of continually accessible and affordable medical services, healthcare professionals who possess inadequate communication skills, and rural-urban health care disparities. Service providers believe that current services do not fulfill community needs. Older adults who live in rural areas experience especially significant screening-related health disparities, which are mainly affected by structural service barriers. To improve the quality of medical services, healthcare screening services should be evaluated according to the perspectives of both participants and service providers.

Safe Use and Disposal of Injections: Saudi Health Providers’ Perception

Injection is said to be safe when causing no harm to the recipient, and it does not expose provider to avoidable risk and does not result in any waste that is dangerous for other people. Purpose: The study was carried out to determine the perspectives of the Saudi health care providers on the safe use and disposal of injection. Methods: Prospective cross sectional survey was used, structured interviews were carried out by the use of pretested questionnaire to elicit general opinions on injection practices skills, and disposal processes in different health settings in Taif Area. Results: Females were dominant injection providers 82.3%. About 80% of providers tend to discard single use injection at once after administration and 84% tend to safely dispose them. Hygienic measures were well maintained. Increased used pattern of injection was observed 46%. Providers were well satisfied by the measures adopted to curb after using hazards. High rate of injection sticks 74.3% was observed. Conclusion: Although some measures of safe disposal were maintained by Saudi injections’ providers, still some regulation efforts should be done to curb spreading out of infection due to mal use and disposal of injection.

Prediction-Based Resource Assignment Scheme to Maximize the Net Profit of Cloud Service Providers

In a cloud computing environment, users using the pay-as-you-go billing model can relinquish their services at any point in time and pay accordingly. From the perspective of the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), this is not beneficial as they may lose the opportunity to earn from the relinquished resources. Therefore, this paper tackles the resource assignment problem while considering users relinquishment and its impact on the net profit of CSPs. As a solution, we first compare different ways to predict user behavior (i.e. how likely a user will leave the system before its scheduled end time) and deduce a better prediction technique based on linear regression. Then, based on the RACE (Relinquishment-Aware Cloud Economics) model proposed in [1], we develop a relinquishment-aware resource optimization model to estimate the amount of resources to assign on the basis of predicted user behavior. Simulations performed with CloudSim show that cloud service providers can gain more by estimating the amount of resources using better prediction techniques rather than blindly assigning resources to users. They also show that the proposed prediction-based resource assignment scheme typically generates more profit for a lower or similar utilization.

“It All Goes Back to the Services”: A Rural/Urban Comparison of Service Providers’ Perceptions of Challenges and Facilitators to Disability Services

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore rural/urban differences in service providers’ perceptions of challenges and facilitators to services for children with special health care needs (CSHN) and their families in southeast Georgia. Methodology: A total of 23 individual interviews were conducted with service providers in one rural county in southeast Georgia (N = 12) and in one urban county in north central Georgia (N = 11). Interviews were based on the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs 2009-2010 survey. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and coded with the intent of identifying themes and illustrative quotes. Findings: Service providers discussed a variety of challenges to accessing services related to socioeconomic status and the transition out of the school system. Urban and rural service providers’ perceptions were similar overall, with the exception of lack of transportation and access to a variety of services in rural area. Service providers overcome challenges through identifying parents’ needs and limitations and adapting service provision. Some of the facilitators mentioned by both urban and rural service providers are availability of transportation and resources. Practical Implications: The results of this study provide public health practice and policy implications that could guide the pathways of targeted interventions to improve the access and availability of variety of services for CSHCN. Originality/value of paper: This paper represents an in-depth exploration of service provider’s perceptions of challenges and facilitators related to service provision for children with special healthcare needs.