Health Services

 Health services research (HSR) became a burgeoning field in North America within the 1960s, when scientific information and policy deliberation began to coalesce. Also referred to as health systems research or health policy and systems research (HPSR), may be a multidisciplinary scientific field that examines how people get access to health care practitioners and health care services, what proportion care costs, and what happens to patients as a results of this care. Health Services Research utilizes all qualitative and quantitative methods across the board to ask questions of the healthcare system. It focuses on performance, quality, effectiveness and efficiency of health care services as they relate to health problems of people and populations, similarly as health care systems. Health Services Research addresses wide-ranging topics of structure, processes, and organization of health care services; their use and people's access to services; efficiency and effectiveness of health care services; the standard of healthcare services and its relationship to health status, and; the uses of medical knowledge.   Studies in HSR investigate how social factors, health policy, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, medical technology, and private behaviors affect access to health care, the standard and value of health care, and quantity and quality of life. Compared with medical research, HSR could be a relatively young science that developed through the bringing together of scientific discipline perspectives with the contributions of people and institutions engaged in delivering health services.