To improve hospital access for expectant women and newborns in the state of Maryland, a quality improvement team reviewed the patient flow characteristics of our neonatal intensive care unit. We identified inefficiencies in patient discharges, including delays in patient transports. Several patient transport delays were caused by late preparation and delivery of the patient transfer summary. Ba...

Background Patient falls are considered a challenge to the patient’s safety in hospitals, which, in addition to increasing the length of stay and costs, may also result in severe injuries or even the death of the patient. This study aims to investigate the associations between risk factors among fallers in comparison with the control group.   Methods A prospective nested...

To improve hospital access for expectant women and newborns in the state of Maryland, a quality improvement team reviewed the patient flow characteristics of our neonatal intensive care unit. We identified inefficiencies in patient discharges, including delays in patient transports. Several patient transport delays were caused by late preparation and delivery of the patient transfer summary. Ba...

The decision to transfer a patient with a head injury to a neurosurgical department is usually made during a referral telephone call. The referring doctor describes the patient's condition to the neurosurgeon who then decides whether or not the patient needs to be transferred. Failure to inform the neurosurgeon adequately, may result in a disastrous decision to transfer an unstable patient. Alt...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to identify challenges to inter-departmental coordination activities that affect patient transfer workflow and to provide socio-technical requirements for the design of technologies to better support patient transfer workflow. DESIGN We conducted our study in two clinical and one non-clinical department at a major academic hospital. We utilized qualitati...

OBJECTIVES To determine the proportion of infants admitted to our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) from multiple gestations resulting from artificial reproductive technology (ART), the complications experienced and interventions required by these infants, and the estimated effect of a mandatory policy of single embryo transfer on admissions and complication rates in our hospital and across C...

AIM The aim of the paper was to identify the models of information exchange for UK telehealth systems. METHODOLOGY Twelve telehealth offerings were evaluated and models representing the information exchange routes were constructed. Questionnaires were used to validate the diagrammatical representations of the models with a response rate of 55%. RESULTS The models were classified as possessi...