OBJECTIVE To explore the relationship between inpatient mortality and implicit rationing of nursing care, the quality of nurse work environments and the patient-to-nurse staffing ratio in Swiss acute care hospitals. DESIGN Cross-sectional correlational design. SETTING Eight Swiss acute care hospitals examined in a survey-based study and 71 comparison institutions. PARTICIPANTS A total of ...

A state-sponsored evaluation of aging in place (AIP) as an alternative to assisted living and nursing home has been underway in Missouri. Cost, physical, and mental health assessment data reveal the cost-effectiveness and positive health measures of AIP. Findings of the first four years of the AIP evaluation of two long-term care settings in Missouri with registered nurse care coordination are ...

The functional and health characteristics of nursing home residents in New York State using a multivariate classification procedure are examined in this article. This analysis suggested that these characteristics could be explained in terms of six dimensions. The association of these six dimensions with two existing sets of nursing home case-mix groups was analyzed in order to determine how gro...

BACKGROUND Performance measurement and benchmarking are common concerns in the delivery of long term care. It is common to measure the performance of providers and to publicly report these data. This paper examines selected technical challenges facing those who design, implement and disseminate health care quality performance measures. METHOD Review of the application of measures of performan...

BACKGROUND Swedish nursing home care has undergone a transformation, where the previous virtual public monopoly on providing such services has been replaced by a system of mixed provision. This has led to a rapidly growing share of private actors, the majority of which are large, for-profit firms. In the wake of this development, concerns have been voiced regarding the implications for care qua...

BACKGROUND Quality improvement (QI) programs focused on mastery of content by individual staff members are the current standard to improve resident outcomes in nursing homes. However, complexity science suggests that learning is a social process that occurs within the context of relationships and interactions among individuals. Thus, QI programs will not result in optimal changes in staff behav...

The aim of the present study was to describe how registered nurses in nursing homes ensure legal security, good and safe nursing care and uphold the dignity of nursing home residents with severe dementia without violating residents' integrity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 charge nurses in a county in central Sweden. The transcribed interviews were examined using manifest an...

Recommender systems have been extensively studied to present items such as movies, music, and books that are likely of interest to the user. We propose to use correlations among nursing diagnoses, outcomes, and interventions to create a recommender system for constructing nursing care plans. Nursing care plan recommender systems can provide clinical decision support, nursing education, clinical...

Benchmarking expedites the quest for best practices and is crucial to hospitals' effective, reliable, and superior performance. Comparative performance data are used by accrediting and regulatory bodies to evaluate performance and by consumers in making decisions on where to seek healthcare. Nursing-sensitive quality measures affirmed by the National Quality Forum are now used in public reporti...