This paper reviews the relative strengths and weaknesses of outcome and process measures as performance indicators in health care. Differences in outcome may be due to case mix, how the data were collected, chance, or quality of care. Health care is only one determinant of health and other factors have important effects on health outcomes, such as nutrition, environment, lifestyle and poverty. ...

Research Bulletin Issue 2 | Jan 2012 Australian families, communities and government are increasingly aware of the capacity of child care and kindergarten services to support the learning and development of our young children. The evidence is clear that these early experiences are an important influence on a child’s personal and social development in both the short-term and across the lifespan....

oral health problems, among the most prevalent comorbidities related to addiction, require more attention by both clinicians and policy-makers. our aims were to review oral complications associated with drugs, oral health care in addiction rehabilitation, health services available, and barriers against oral health promotion among addicts. drug abuse is associated with serious oral health proble...

Low-dose extrapolation model selection for evaluating the health effects of environmental pollutants is a key component of the risk assessment process. At a workshop held in Baltimore, Maryland, on 23-24 April 2007, sponsored by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Johns Hopkins Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute, a multidisciplinary group of experts reviewed the state of the science...

The Precautionary Principle in its simplest form states: "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically". This Principle is the basis for European environmental law, and plays an increasing role in developing environmental health policies as w...

The objective of the paper is to review the effects of the implementation of the Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) on process measures (quality of care plans and staff satisfaction) and outcome measures (health problems and quality of life) in nursing homes. All available publications on the effects of the RAI were included in the review. The most positive effects of the RAI were found in im...

introduction: health information plays a vital role in managers' decision making and planning. health information in the form of medical records is also useful for caregivers, quality assessment, financial payments, legal measures, education, research and planning. in this study, to examine the managers and personnel's viewpoints about the application of medical records. methods and material: i...

introduction: recent evolutions in medical education and trend to specialization have led to serious concern about the quality of undergraduate education especially in main medical universities. according to medical education literature, outcome-based curriculum development seems more suitable for clinical phase rotations. in this article we present our experience in planning an outcome-based 2...

BACKGROUND Prior studies have shown that many patients are interested in Internet-based technology that enables them to control their own care. As a result, innovative eHealth services are evolving rapidly, including self-assessment tools and secure patient-caregiver email communication. It is interesting to explore how these technologies can be used for supporting self-care. OBJECTIVE The ai...