OBJECTIVE To test clinical pathways in a variety of Italian health care organizations in 2000-2002 to measure performance in decreasing process and outcome variations. DESIGN Creation of indicators, specific for each clinical pathway, to measure variations in the care processes and outcomes. Pre- and post-analysis model to evaluate the possible effect of the clinical pathways on each indicato...

BACKGROUND Clinical pathways are tools used to guide evidence-based healthcare that have been implemented internationally since the 1980s. However, there is widespread lack of agreement on the impact of clinical pathways on hospital resources and patient outcomes. This can be partially attributed to the confusion for both researchers and healthcare workers regarding what constitutes a clinical ...

Introduction Clinical pathways have been analyzed for all patients at all Norwegian somatic hospitals during the period 2003– 2007. A clinical pathway is defined as the number of contacts, and what kind of contact (outpatient visit, daycare, admission), that a patient had at the same hospital in a year. The paper will focus on changes during the five years, differences between university hospit...

The aim of the present study was to ascertain the pharmacoeconomical efficacy of a clinical pathway (CP) employing medication management and instruction tasks (i. e. pharmaceutical care and counseling for inpatients) in gastrectomy patients. Pharmaceutical services of a uniform quality were provided. These included a CP check sheet, medication management, and a history of the drugs chiefly pres...

The lung cancer is one of the most dangerous cancers and is also the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, accounting for about 1.3 million deaths annually. However in clinical practice, lung cancer therapies commonly do with chemotherapy, although it is hard because the lung cancer may progress to metastasis stage. The metastasis of lung cancer is highly dependent of expression of matrix me...