BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) remains a significant public health burden. Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) is a method of supported breathing used as standard care for acutely unwell patients in hospital with COPD, but there is uncertainty around the potential benefits of using NIV in the treatment of stable patients in a non-hospital setting. This is a protocol for syst...

Because of the general lack of multi-level hospital management collaboration performance effectiveness research, this paper proposes a multi-level hospital management Synergy Entropy-House of Quality (HoQ) Measurement Model by innovatively combining the House of Quality (HoQ) measure model with a Synergy Entropy computing principle. Triangular fuzzy functions are used to determine the importanc...

OBJECTIVE To assess the cost-effectiveness of abciximab therapy versus traditional practice in high-risk patients receiving percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) from a Canadian hospital perspective. DESIGN A predictive decision analytic model using published clinical and economic evaluations, as well as costs of medical care in Canada. SUBJECTS High-risk PTCA patients as de...

Although influenza and pneumonia are largely vaccine-preventable, vaccination coverage rates are well below Healthy People 2010 goals. The aim of this study was to examine the costs and cost-effectiveness of three provider-based vaccination interventions in the hospital setting: standing orders programs (SOPs), physician reminders (PRs), and pre-printed orders (PPOs). Data on program operating ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the costs and cost-effectiveness of an intervention to improve quality of care for children with diarrhea or pneumonia in 14 hospitals in Nicaragua, based on expenditure data and impact measures. METHODS Hospital length of stay (LOS) and deaths were abstracted from a random sample of 1294 clinical records completed at seven of the 14 participating hospitals before the i...

The Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake, which hit the Niigata Prefecture of Japan on 23 October 2004, claimed 40 deaths. Of these victims, 27 were killed almost instantly by trauma, and 23 were killed by so-called disaster-related death. At least 11 people suffered from pulmonary embolism and five died within two weeks of the disaster. All of them had been using motor vehicles as their shelter, because...