BACKGROUND Increasing the range and scope of early activation/auto launch helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) may alleviate unnecessary injury mortality that disproportionately affects rural populations. To date, attempts to develop a quantitative framework for the optimal location of HEMS facilities have been absent. METHODS Our analysis used five years of critical care data from te...

Disconnects and defects in care – such as duplication, poor integration between services or avoidable adverse events – are costly to the health system and potentially harmful to patients and families. For patients living with multiple chronic conditions, such disconnects can be particularly detrimental. Lean is an approach to optimizing value by reducing waste (eg, duplication and defects) and ...

background: spiritual well-being (swb) of patients with cardiovascular diseases particularly in those admitted in coronary care unit (ccu) is threatened due to disease crisis. therefore, implementing spiritual care is necessary for them. this study aimed to determine the effect of spiritual care program on swb of patients with cardiac ischemia admitted in ccu in al-zahra hospital, isfahan, iran...

ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS (EHRs) have tremendous potential for improving healthcare quality and safety. However, as EHRs become more complex and interconnected with several different computer systems, health information management (HIM) related activities become more challenging. Moreover, the potential for EHR-related safety concerns increases dramatically. The rapid growth of EHR adoption int...

Assessing and improving the quality of health care was, until recently, a low priority, both for policy makers in developing countries, and for technical agencies. The authors review the reasons for this long neglect of quality of care, which include: (i) a perceived priority of extending coverage at the expense of quality; (ii) the view that quality is difficult to assess in the absence of rel...

BACKGROUND The Swiss health system is customer-driven with fee-for-service paiement scheme and universal coverage. It is highly performing but expensive and health information systems are scarcely implemented. The Swiss Primary Care Active Monitoring (SPAM) program aims to develop an instrument able to describe the performance and effectiveness of the Swiss PC system. METHODS Based on a Liter...

To achieve the diverse health care goals of the United States, health care value must increase. The capacity to create value through innovation is facilitated by an integrated delivery system focused on creating value, measuring innovation returns, and receiving market rewards. This paper describes the Geisinger Health System's innovation strategy for care model redesign. Geisinger's clinical l...

Community definition is an important aspect of community health work in general and community-oriented primary care (COPC) in particular. Yet, community definitions are often nonspecific, relying on geopolitical boundaries or local presumptions about patient populations. Such definitions are an impediment to the precise application of sociodemographic or health status data to community health p...