Psychologists practice in an increasingly diverse range of health care delivery systems. The following guidelines are intended to assist psychologists, other health care providers, administrators in health care delivery systems, and the public to conceptualize the roles and responsibilities of psychologists in these diverse contexts. These guidelines revise and build upon earlier guidelines reg...

BACKGROUND Telemedical Maritime Assistance Service (TMAS) is one of the fundamental components of medical assistance delivery at sea. However, while onshore telemedicine is undergoing a fast growth, these research and clinical investments unfortunately did not yet benefit for telemedicine at sea. DIVERGENCES BETWEEN TELEMEDICINE AT SEA AND ONSHORE While telemedicine aims at providing distant ...

The need for corporate compliance programs in health care delivery systems is ever increasing. This article identifies the key items a good program should contain, and addresses issues raised by the existence of a program as well as its implementation.

One of the key indicators of the success, maturity, and overall health of a research field is its ability to attract and train bright and talented young investigators. In this regard, the recent Young Investigator Competition at the American Heart Association’s Quality of Care and Outcomes Research (QCOR) conference is a perfect testament to the fact that our field is vibrant and thriving. As a...

At West Virginia University, we were one of the first to implement a Web-based distributed multimedia medical record1, enabling health care providers to collaborate to improve health care delivery. Advanced Research Testbed for Medical Informatics (ARTEMIS) is an open-architecture implementation of collaboration technology in the health care arena that utilized informationsharing, team coordina...

The relationship of religion and health is often misunderstood owing to a tendency to concentrate on the medical model and to ignore the wider context of heath care. A conceptual--as opposed to a historical--examination of this context reveals nine central religious ideas or categories which provide an ethical foundation and heritage for medical practice and health care delivery. These include ...

Whether patient satisfaction scores can act as a catalyst for improving health care is highly debated. Some argue that pursuing patient satisfaction is overemphasized and potentially at odds with providing good care because it leads providers to overtest and overtreat patients and to bend to unreasonable patient demands, all to improve their ratings. Others cite studies showing that high patien...

Nursing leaders from the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System (VAECHCS) developed an evolving model of caring theory-guided practice. As leaders and administrators with multiple roles, functions, and perspectives in a large healthcare system, the authors create and hold space for human caring and relationship-centered care within a clinical practice setting. This article contributes an overvi...

The world's first entirely digital radiology system was planned in 1988 and implemented in 1992 in the Danube Hospital of the Socio Medical Care Centre East in Vienna, Austria. An overview is provided of a decade's experience in digital radiology, and of the various considerations in implementing such a system. This experience has proven that the principal advantage of digital radiology is reli...

BACKGROUND Quality of care is an important aspect of health care delivery system that is given a priority. Quality is a multidimensional concept that has been defined in various ways. Variation in quality of care between different health care facilities is thought to reflect differences in efficiency and other organizational factors. There was no adequate study related to quality of health care...