Like most nonprofit hospitals, those of Massachusetts are facing serious financial challenges. Although the immediate issue is the shortfall between revenues and expenses, the author finds that the real problems are systemic, evidenced by at least three structural impediments: uncompensated care, overuse of teaching hospitals, and an increasingly unattractive environment for the practice of med...

OBJECTIVES Swiss health care is relatively costly. In order better to understand the drivers of spending, this study analyses geographic variation in per capita consultation costs for ambulatory care. METHODS Small area and longitudinal analysis of costs of ambulatory services covered by compulsory health insurance, 2003-07. RESULTS The results show considerable geographic variation in per ...

Nursing leaders in ambulatory care need to objectively quantify patient intensity to balance patient care needs and nursing resources. In this three-part series the current literature on acuity/intensity tools will be reviewed, and the development of an Ambulatory Intensity System (AIS) to objectively quantify the nursing care will be described.

Background: Direct patient contact is crucial in learning important interactional and examination skills. However, medical students have limited opportunity to self-responsibly practise these skills in authentic clinical settings and typically receive insufficient feedback on their performance. We developed a novel single-session ambulatory teaching concept (Heidelberg Student Ambulatory traini...

Background:  Elbow surgery is shared by several subspecialties. We were curious about the most common elbow surgeries and their corresponding diagnoses in the United States.   Methods:  We used the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) and the National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery (NSAS) data gathered in 2006-databases that together provide an estimate of all inpatient and ambulatory surgic...