BACKGROUND Nurse-led models of comprehensive geriatric assessment and care coordination can improve health management as well as reduce hospitalisations for high risk community dwelling older people. This study investigated the effect on healthcare utilisation of systematic case finding to identify high risk older people in the community with a subsequent comprehensive assessment and care coord...

BACKGROUND Japan has introduced an acute psychiatric care unit to the public healthcare insurance program, but its requirement of a shorter length of stay could lead to discharges without proper discharge planning. The aim of this study was to examine the association between the implementation of discharge planning and the length of stay of acute psychiatric inpatients in Japan. METHODS This ...

Increasing reliance on family care of elderly people at home calls for a critical analysis of the relationship between formal and informal caregivers. Although much has been written about how health professionals and family caregivers should relate to one another, we know very little about the relationships that develop between them. Using data from a qualitative study, this article illustrates...

http://ccn.aacnjournals.org Kimberly Scherr is the nurse practitioner in internal medicine at Misericordia Community Hospital and Health Centre, Edmonton, Alberta. At the time this article was written, she was the nurse practitioner for the cardiovascular intensive care unit at University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton. Gayle Urquhart is the professional practice leader in nursing at Universit...

There is good progress with the implementation of South Africa's antiretroviral treatment program. The country, however, faces human resource shortages that could be addressed through appropriate task shifting. During 2009, we studied task shifting from nurses to community health workers (CHWs) for HIV treatment and care at 12 primary health-care clinics in Free State Province, South Africa. We...

BACKGROUND frailty is a concept used to describe older people at high risk of adverse outcomes, including falls, functional decline, hospital or nursing home admission and death. The associations between frailty and use of specific health and community services have not been investigated. METHODS the cross-sectional relationship between frailty and use of several health and community services...

This article reports the findings of a study developed to compare health care costs in the United States with those of eight other industrially advanced countries over the period 1960-76. All of the countries studied were found to share with the United States the problem of increased health care spending that has outpaced inflation in other sectors of the economy and continues to consume a grow...

This article reports the findings of a study developed to compare health care costs in the United States with those of eight other industrially advanced countries over the period 1960-76. All of the countries studied were found to share with the United States the problem of increased health care spending that has outpaced inflation in other sectors of the economy and continues to consume a grow...