AIM To determine how increases in surgical patient volume will affect emergency department (ED) access to inpatient cardiac services. To compare how strategies to increase cardiology inpatient throughput can either accommodate increases in surgical volume or improve ED patient access. METHODS A stochastic discrete event simulation was created to model patient flow through a cardiology inpatie...

OBJECTIVES To estimate the incidence, duration and cost of futile treatment for end-of-life hospital admissions. DESIGN Retrospective multicentre cohort study involving a clinical audit of hospital admissions. SETTING Three Australian public-sector tertiary hospitals. PARTICIPANTS Adult patients who died while admitted to one of the study hospitals over a 6-month period in 2012. MAIN OU...

BACKGROUND Surgical pulmonary embolectomy (SPE) is indicated for a pulmonary embolism associated with hemodynamic instability. A review of the literature demonstrates that most studies of SPE are conducted at large academic medical centers. This series is from a 325-bed community hospital. METHODS A retrospective chart review was performed of patients undergoing SPE from January 2008 to Decem...

background: length of stay is one of the most important indicators in assessing hospital performance. a shorter stay can reduce the costs per discharge and shift care from inpatient to less expensive post-acute settings. it can lead to a greater readmission rate, better resource management, and more efficient services. objective: this study aimed to identify the factors influencing length of ho...

Coxian phase-type distributions are a special type of Markov model that describes duration until an event occurs in terms of a process consisting of a sequence of latent phases. This paper considers the use of Coxian phase-type distributions for modelling patient duration of stay for the elderly in hospital and investigates the potential for using the resulting distribution as a classifying var...

introduction althoughthere is a consensus that the economic burden of burn injury is high, but few studies have conducted about cost of burns injury among pediatric in developing countries. we explored the main factors influencing on hospital costs and length of stay (los) associated with pediatric burns injury in kermanshah, iran. methods and material we performed a review ofmedical records fr...

BACKGROUND Acute chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations use many hospital bed days and have a high rate of mortality. Previous audits have shown wide variability in the length of stay and mortality between units not explained by patient factors. This study aimed to explore associations between resources and organisation of care and patient outcomes. METHODS 234 UK acute ho...

OBJECTIVE To create a means by which we can examine and understand the interrelations among the fundamental elements of hospital inpatient care (patients, beds, theatre time, and staff). DESIGN Predictive study of resource utilisation based on a computerised clinical information system of five years' audit data from a surgical management system. SETTING One surgical firm (of one consultant,...

BACKGROUND To improve efficiency, emergency departments (EDs) use dedicated observation units (OUs) to manage patients who are unable to be discharged home, yet do not clearly require inpatient hospitalization. However, operational metrics and their ideal targets have not been created for this setting and patient population. Variation in these metrics across different countries has not previous...