The study collates information on discrimination against consumers on grounds of place of residence or nationality in the Digital Single Market (DSM). Collected evidence indicates such practices as refusals to sell or discriminatory conditions depriving consumers of access to goods and services on DSM or obliging consumers to pay higher prices. The study assesses discrimination from the perspective of different areas of European law including Article 20 (2) of the Services Directive, Private International Law, Competition Law and Intellectual Property Law.
Healthcare organizations have been reshaped in terms of team management following the challenges encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic and even more after it. The use of remote work and the transformation of traditional teams into virtual teams are more present than before. The management of virtual teams in healthcare organizations has certain particularities compared to those in traditional teams, being influenced by the conditions of the environment in which the activity is carried out, the VUCA type environment, but also by the characteristics of the team and the type of managers. The analysis of differences allows us to adapt the management style according to the challenges and obstacles we encounter in these organizations, but also to identify success factors that lead to team performance and the motivation of its members. The theoretical concepts support our research through the interview method and the obtained data, in turn, support the theoretical concepts. The conclusions obtained are beneficial and useful to virtual team managers in healthcare organizations and confirm that there are peculiarities of virtual team management in these types of organizations.
The main objectives of the paper are: to identify and analyze the main ways in which global management practices and strategies can be adapted to survive in the context of the IT driven society, to determine which are the best ways in which managers can deal with the challenges of running global teams, to determine new guidelines, in order to accommodate the common shared digital workspace such created, and to change the approach in which the managerial functions and the management process itself is being regarded in, considering the continuous changes of the digital environment, as the current global workspace evolves.In terms of significant results and conclusions, may be mentioned the ones regarding the necessity of shaping a set of new management practices and strategies capable of validating the real requirements of the new social and economic background in which organizations exist in, and the fact that the traditional way in which the management process unfolds is no longer enough.Also, the paper comprises a set of basic guidelines to be followed in terms of establishing current management trends and practices in the IT driven globalized society, which today's practitioners can use when making their own rules of the game, according to the specific context.Given the dynamic of the environment, further research should be considered and conducted in order to better comprehend the way in which managers need to act so that their companies fully benefit from the information technology opportunities.
Present paper is part of a larger research project that aims to study the peculiarities of organizational culture within health organizations and its impact on motivation, job satisfaction and professional performance of employees in this field of activity. Survey data was collected and analyzed between December 2015 - January 2016. Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) of the variables were calculated and paired-samples T-test and independent-sample t-test were performed in order to validate research hypotheses. As result of our research we found that the cultural profile of Romanian health organizations varies according to their characteristics: type, size and property, among those defined cultural profiles, only for pharmacies could be identified a dominant organizational culture type.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the main strengths and weaknesses of health services management in Romania and the manner in which the key stakeholders relate to them. Taking into consideration that those who can provide the most valuable information are those directly involved, the identifi cation of strengths and weaknesses is based on an empirical research carried out from a dual perspective: that of the employees and specialists from the healthcare system and that of the patients, as their benefi ciaries. The collected data were also used for testing the research hypotheses and most of them were validated. In the end, we point out a series of directions in order to improve the performance and effectiveness of the Romanian health system management.
In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries.
Methods
GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution.
Findings
Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI.
Interpretation
As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and development investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve.
The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the particularities of management tools employed within Romanian organizations and the possible influences they might have on the economic and managerial capabilities. The information collected through the survey conducted in March-May 2015 within 94 organizations in southeastern Romania, allowed us to analyze the particularities of management systems. In this paper, we will focus on other management tools (management methods and techniques). To achieve the aim of the research, five hypotheses were formulated and tested through statistical means.The main results were found to be in line with the theoretical approach and previous research and validated most of the formulated hypotheses. In particular, it was found that to achieve managerial performance, is not enough to implement any of the management tools, but their methodology of design and implementation should be known and properly applied. Managers wanting to enhance their organizations' managerial performance should be aware of the importance of acquire and put into practice managerial knowledge. Thus, it will be created the premises for shaping the directions and means of action able to increase the organizations' competitiveness and performance, through modernization of management tools.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted gaps in health surveillance systems, disease prevention, and treatment globally. Among the many factors that might have led to these gaps is the issue of the financing of national health systems, especially in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), as well as a robust global system for pandemic preparedness. We aimed to provide a comparative assessment of global health spending at the onset of the pandemic; characterise the amount of development assistance for pandemic preparedness and response disbursed in the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic; and examine expectations for future health spending and put into context the expected need for investment in pandemic preparedness.
Methods
In this analysis of global health spending between 1990 and 2021, and prediction from 2021 to 2026, we estimated four sources of health spending: development assistance for health (DAH), government spending, out-of-pocket spending, and prepaid private spending across 204 countries and territories. We used the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Creditor Reporting System (CRS) and the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database (GHED) to estimate spending. We estimated development assistance for general health, COVID-19 response, and pandemic preparedness and response using a keyword search. Health spending estimates were combined with estimates of resources needed for pandemic prevention and preparedness to analyse future health spending patterns, relative to need.
Findings
In 2019, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, US$9·2 trillion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 9·1–9·3) was spent on health worldwide. We found great disparities in the amount of resources devoted to health, with high-income countries spending $7·3 trillion (95% UI 7·2–7·4) in 2019; 293·7 times the $24·8 billion (95% UI 24·3–25·3) spent by low-income countries in 2019. That same year, $43·1 billion in development assistance was provided to maintain or improve health. The pandemic led to an unprecedented increase in development assistance targeted towards health; in 2020 and 2021, $1·8 billion in DAH contributions was provided towards pandemic preparedness in LMICs, and $37·8 billion was provided for the health-related COVID-19 response. Although the support for pandemic preparedness is 12·2% of the recommended target by the High-Level Independent Panel (HLIP), the support provided for the health-related COVID-19 response is 252·2% of the recommended target. Additionally, projected spending estimates suggest that between 2022 and 2026, governments in 17 (95% UI 11–21) of the 137 LMICs will observe an increase in national government health spending equivalent to an addition of 1% of GDP, as recommended by the HLIP.
Interpretation
There was an unprecedented scale-up in DAH in 2020 and 2021. We have a unique opportunity at this time to sustain funding for crucial global health functions, including pandemic preparedness. However, historical patterns of underfunding of pandemic preparedness suggest that deliberate effort must be made to ensure funding is maintained.
The purpose of this paper was to provide empirical evidence of the impact of quality assurance in higher education on two relevant higher education outcomes; students’ knowledge, skills, and competencies; and their employability. Survey data were collected from two major Romanian public universities and analyzed using a partial least-squares structural equations modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The main results suggested that students’ competencies were positively and directly influenced by the quality of the educational process, as well as the practical and research activities. The students’ chances of employment in the labor market were positively and directly influenced only by the quality of the educational process and by the research activities. Indirect influences were also revealed. The findings of the study may be shown to have theoretical implications by proposing a model that links the features of quality management in higher education institutions with students’ competencies and chances of employment in the labor market. From a practical perspective, the results may be of interest to higher education policy makers, to evaluation and accreditation institutions, to universities, and also to students.
The purpose of this study is to provide a new perspective of the motivation-performance link, and the influence of satisfying each basic human needs, described by Maslow's hierarchy of needs, on employees' professional performance. We assumed that the positive relationship between each dimension of motivation and professional performance is mediated by work satisfaction. The proposed conceptual model was operationalized by seven latent constructs (the five dimensions of motivation, inspired by the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, job satisfaction and the professional performance), each of them measured by several observed indicators. The survey conducted for this occasion, was filled in by 824 employees from Romanian health organizations. Based on the research results, we can state that the Romanian health system employees are mostly motivated by meeting the needs of higher level, especially the need of self-actualization, and to a lesser extent by meeting the lower level ones. Those findings may serve as useful insights for health system policy makers and managerial practices in designing and implementing the most effective motivational strategies, able to generate increased professional performance.
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