BACKGROUND Exclusive breastfeeding for infants up to 6 months is widely recommended, yet breastfeeding rates are relatively low in the US. The most common reason women stop breastfeeding early is a perceived insufficiency of milk. Galactagogues are herbal and pharmaceutical products that can help increase milk supply; however, data on their efficacy and safety is limited. Lactation consultants,...

The Health Results Team for Information Management (HRT-IM) was formed at the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in the fall of 2004 to engage and work collaboratively with the healthcare community to implement change in health system information management. The information management strategy focused on producing better data, supporting accountability and quality improvement through...

OBJECTIVE To design and implement the Lovelace Diabetes EPISODES OF CARE program in a managed care setting. This program is intended to address the complex needs of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus by using specific physician-provider and patient interventions. DESIGN Observational study. SETTING Lovelace Health Systems, the second-largest and most fully integrated health care deliver...

Three overlapping initiatives can be found in the effort to improve the management of chronic illness: the report card initiative, the disease management industry, and "Improving Chronic Illness Care." The third of these initiatives proposes the Chronic Care Model to assist provider organizations in chronic care improvement. The Chronic Care Model is made up of six major elements: community res...

Undergoing treatment with assisted reproductive technology may be a traumatic experience that will contribute to a variety of psychological difficulties. This is chiefly important because the numbers of women looking for infertility services are increasing. Therefore the emotional and psychological support offered in their nursing care is dominant. The degree of emotional distress can be very h...

Although the health care sector has already been subjected to a major computerization effort, this effort is often limited to the implementation of standalone systems which do not communicate with each other. Interoperability problems limit health care applications from achieving their full potential. In this paper, we propose the use of Semantic Web technologies to solve interoperability probl...

This report synthesizes findings and lessons from case studies of four diverse health care organizations participating in the Brookings–Dartmouth ACO Pilot Program, launched in 2009 to support selected provider groups that are collaborating with private payers to form accountable care organizations (ACOs). The organizations are: HealthCare Partners, a medical group/independent practice associat...