Some emergency admissions can be avoided if acute exacerbations of health problems are managed by emergency and urgent care services without resorting to admission to a hospital bed. In England, these services include hospitals, emergency ambulance, and a range of primary and community services. The aim was to identify whether characteristics of hospitals affect potentially avoidable emergency ...

In the Republic of Ireland, approximately 30 per cent of the population (‘medical card patients’) are entitled to free GP services. Eligibility is determined primarily on the basis of an income means test. The remaining 70 per cent of the population (‘private patients’) must pay the full cost of GP consultations. In July 2001, eligibility for a medical card was extended to all those over 70 yea...

OBJECTIVES Potentially avoidable hospitalisations have been used as a proxy for primary care quality. We aimed to analyse the ecological association between contextual and systemic factors featured in the Spanish healthcare system and the variation in potentially avoidable hospitalisations for a number of chronic conditions. METHODS A cross-section ecological study based on the linkage of adm...

BACKGROUND Cancellation of elective scheduled operations on the day of surgery leads to an inefficient use of operating room (OR) time and a waste of resources. It also causes inconvenience for patients and families. Moreover, day of surgery (DOS) cancellation creates logistic and financial burden associated with extended hospital stay and repetitions of pre-operative preparations as well as op...

STUDY DESIGN A cross-sectional survey of orthopedic spine surgery fellowship directors in the United States. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate whether consensus exists with respect to spine-related adverse events and certain hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) or "never events." SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA As part of a broad effort to improve health care outcomes, providers ...

Nursing facility residents are frequently admitted to the hospital, and these hospital stays are often potentially avoidable. Such hospitalizations are detrimental to patients and costly to Medicare and Medicaid. In 2012 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the Initiative to Reduce Avoidable Hospitalizations among Nursing Facility Residents, using evidence-based clinical and ...

OBJECTIVE Estimate the Years of Life Lost (YLL) for overall and avoidable causes of death (CoD) in Colombia for the period 1998-2011. METHODS From the reported deaths to the Colombian mortality database during 1998-2011, we classified deaths from avoidable causes. With the reference life table of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 study, we estimated the overall YLL and YLL due to avoida...

In this study, an integrated structure of the air separation unit, natural gas liquids recovery equipped with nitrogen removal unit is developed. In this regard, advanced exergy and exergoeconomic analyses are used to examine the irreversibility, possible improvements and the cost of the inefficiencies of the process. The exergy analysis presents information on the origin of the irreversibility...

BACKGROUND Australian Aboriginal children experience a disproportionate burden of social and health disadvantage. Avoidable hospitalizations present a potentially modifiable health gap that can be targeted and monitored using population data. This study quantifies inequalities in pediatric avoidable hospitalizations between Australian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. METHODS This state...

OBJECTIVE To review literature identifying key components for measuring avoidable readmissions, their prevalence, risk factors, and interventions that can reduce potentially avoidable readmissions. DATA SOURCES AND EXTRACTION Literature search using Medline, PubMed and the Cochrane Library up to June 2010, using the terms "avoidable", "preventable", "unplanned", "unnecessary", "readmission", ...