Preface

The concept of healthcare access is continuously evolving. It is globally recognized that healthcare-seeking behavior tends to involve seeking access to multiple healthcare providers. This book covers a range of topics related to healthcare access, including occupational health and safety, occupational hygiene, universal health coverage, economic aspects of healthcare services, issues related to low-resource primary healthcare settings, factors influencing access to reliable healthcare, emergency healthcare access, issues of ethical deliberation in the allocation of resources, patient satisfaction, laboratory services, medical tourism, and healthcare access and usefulness of advanced technologies in healthcare delivery. As an extended responsibility, healthcare providers can create mechanisms to facilitate subjective decision-making in accessing the right kind of healthcare services as well as various options to support financial needs to bear healthcare-related expenses while seeking health and fulfilling the healthcare needs of the population. Adequate healthcare access not only requires the availability of comprehensive healthcare facilities but also affordability and knowledge of the availability of these services. This volume brings together experiences and opinions from global leaders to develop affordable, sustainable, and uniformly available options to access healthcare services.

#### **Dr. Amit Agrawal**

Department of Neurosurgery, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, India

#### **Dr. Srinivas Kosgi**

Department of Psychiatry, Dharwad Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Dharwad, India
