Quality of Care and Access to Health Care Services

Dear Colleagues,

In order to deliver effective healthcare services to individuals and patient populations, healthcare must be safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and people centric. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Chronic Respiratory Diseases (CRD) affect hundreds of millions of people. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema are a group of chronic diseases that rank fifth in self-reported prevalence worldwide. Home respiratory care improves the quality of life of people with respiratory diseases or their families in their places of residence. The increasing number of patients receiving Home Respiratory Therapy (HRT) is majorly impacting routine clinical care and the sustainability of the healthcare system. The challenge is to maintain the quality of care while continuing to guarantee the provision of HRT, using Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) and Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to provide important insights into the quality of Health Care.

The Special Issue “Quality of Care and Access to Health Care Services” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health will focus on home respiratory therapy for patients, providing important input on how to tailor respiratory quality of care. Manuscripts that integrate novel and emerging perspectives on Health Care Services in different environments (home-, community- and hospital-based) and using various digital tools (telemonitoring of equipments, telemonitoring of patient vital signs, telerehabilitation) are of particular interest.

Dr. Cátia Caneiras
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• home care services
• quality of health care
• respiratory diseases
• pulmonary rehabilitation
• oxygen
• non-invasive ventilation
• sleep care
• e-health