Rising post-acute care expenditures for Medicare transfer patients and increasing vertical integration between hospitals and nursing facilities raise questions about the links between payment system structure, the incentive for vertical integration and the impact on efficiency. In the United States, policy-makers are responding to these concerns by initiating prospective payments to nursing fac...

The four Regional Training Centres (RTCs) founded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have used their regional context and resources to develop an innovative approach to reach their common goal of increasing capacity in applied health and nursing services research in Canada. As this overview explains, experiential learning features ...

Occupational health nurses use their knowledge and skills to improve the health and safety of the working population; however, companies increasingly face budget constraints and may eliminate health and safety programs. Occupational health nurses must be prepared to document their services and outcomes, and use quantitative tools to demonstrate their value to employers. The aim of this project ...

As our nation’s population ages, an increasing number of Americans will need some type of long-term care services. While more attention is being focused on the development of alternatives to nursing home care, most public and private spending still pays for institutional care in nursing homes. Minnesota spent over $800 million in Medicaid funds on nursing homes in 1995; the federal government f...

This is the second in a series of reports to share key learnings from my sabbatical. In spring and summer of 2005, I took a three-month journey through Scandinavia, Europe, Ireland and the United Kingdom to observe innovation in nursing service delivery, in particular, nursing-led services; to explore outcome measurement as it relates to nursing services; to look at patient satisfaction and imp...

Volume of Homeand Community-Based Services and Time to Nursing-Home Placement Laura P. Sands,1 Huiping Xu,2 Joseph Thomas III,1, 3 Sudeshna Paul,4 Bruce A. Craig,1 ,Marc Rosenman2 Caroline C. Doebbeling,5 Michael Weiner,2, 6, 7, 1Purdue University 2Indiana University School of Medicine 3Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering 4Harvard Medical School 5MDwise Hoosier, Indianapolis 6Indiana ...

OBJECTIVE To estabilish a regional list for nursing research priorities in health systems and services in the Region of the Americas based on the concepts of Universal Access to Health and Universal Health Coverage. METHOD Five-stage consensus process: systematic review of literature; appraisal of resulting questions and topics; ranking of the items by graduate program coordinators; discussio...

Contracting out of health services to the private sectors has been the subject of extensive debate and discussion among health personnel and policymakers. Outsourcing is now considered as a useful management tool for health care managers in the public sector. Outsourcing increases efficiency and service quality, reduces costs, focuses on core processes, improves skills, enhances the overall com...