OBJECTIVE To determine the impact of transferring a pediatric population to mechanical ventilator dependency units (MVDUs) or to home mechanical ventilation (HMV) on bed availability in the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS This is a longitudinal, retrospective study of hospitalized children who required prolonged mechanical ventilation at the MVDU located at the Hospital Auxiliar ...

BACKGROUND Because overweight and obesity are associated with comorbidities, increasing levels of overweight and obesity may impact on hospital use. METHODS Body mass index (BMI) in middle age was related to acute hospital use in 7036 men and 8327 women from the Renfrew/Paisley prospective cohort study in Scotland. Participants in this general population study were examined between 1972 and 1...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the association between clinical need and hospital bed supply and utilization in Russia; and, to investigate these associations in areas where traditional Russian tuberculosis health care systems exist and where the directly observed therapy-short course (DOTS) strategy has been implemented. DESIGN Ecological study using 2002 routine data. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Hos...

BACKGROUND Previous work has suggested that given a hospital's need to admit more patients from the emergency department (ED), high inpatient bed occupancy may encourage premature hospital discharges that favor the hospital's need for beds over patients' medical interests. We argue that the effects of such action would be measurable as a greater proportion of unplanned hospital readmissions amo...

OBJECTIVE To measure the association between the number of doctors, nurses and hospital beds per 10,000 people and individual HIV-infected patient outcomes in Botswana. DESIGN Analysis of routinely collected longitudinal data from 97,627 patients who received ART through the Botswana National HIV/AIDS Treatment Program across all 24 health districts from 2002 to 2013. Doctors, nurses, and hos...

The relationship between socioeconomic factors and hospital use is not well understood in the Canadian context. We used the 1991 Canada census and 1990-92 Ontario hospital discharge abstracts for residents of southeast Toronto to calculate crude and age-sex adjusted rates of hospital admission, bed days, and costs by quintile of low-income households. Population-based rates of admission to hosp...

OBJECTIVE To analyze if size, administrative level, legal status, type of unit and educational activity influence the hospital network performance in providing services to the Brazilian Unified Health System. METHODS This cross-sectional study evaluated data from the Hospital Information System and the Cadastro Nacional de Estabelecimentos de Saúde (National Registry of Health Facilities), 2012...

OBJECTIVE To compare all-cause and liver-related hospital resource use in the 6 and 12 months pre-rifaximin-α and post-rifaximin-α initiation in UK patients with hepatic encephalopathy (HE). DESIGN A UK multicentre, retrospective, observational study. Patients' medical records were reviewed for demographics, clinical outcomes and adverse events (AEs) to rifaximin-α. Details of hospital admiss...

STUDY OBJECTIVES We hypothesized that continuous, automatic turning utilizing a patient-friendly, low air loss surface would reduce the incidence of early ICU pneumonia in selected groups of critically ill medical patients. DESIGN Prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial. SETTING Medical ICU of a large community teaching hospital. PATIENTS One hundred twenty-four critically ill ...