An increasing focus on hospital productivity has rendered a need for more thorough knowledge of cost drivers in hospitals, including a need for quantification of the impact of age, case-mix and other characteristics of patients, as well as establishment of the cost-quality relationship.The aim of this study is to identify cost drivers for vascular surgery in Danish hospitals with a specific vie...

This paper explores the nature of strategic goals underlying composite information systems (CIS) and ways to increase the likelihood of success. It studies a major regional hospital and its relationships with its physicians a s part of an actual case study for providing physicians and staff convenient interface to disparate hospital departments. This situation is a particularly appropriate CIS ...

INTRODUCTION The German healthcare system is facing ongoing radical change and development. The increasing tendency to urge hospitals and medical staff to work in a profit-oriented way constitute among other factors clear present and future challenges. Physicians and surgeons in particular increasingly complain of increasing stress attributed to measures aiming at cost reduction in hospitals. T...

BACKGROUND High performing hospitals attain excellence across multiple measures of performance and multiple departments. Studying high performing hospitals can be valuable if factors associated with high performance can be identified and applied. Factors leading to high performance are complex and an exclusive quantitative approach may fail to identify richly descriptive or relevant contextual ...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have identified medication errors in preparing and administering intravenous medicines of 13-84% in hospitals in individual countries. OBJECTIVE To compare the effect of the design and implementation of systems for the preparation and administration of intravenous therapy in hospitals in three European countries on the number of observed medication errors. To gain ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine developmental trends in healthcare organisation management practice and improvement work. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Primary healthcare centre (n = 1,031) and clinical hospital department (n = 1,542) managers were surveyed in spring 2007 (response rate 46 per cent). This article compares results from this survey with a study in 2003...

Very little of WHO's work is done by the Organization alone. Much of it takes the form of coordination and collaboration in which WHO acts in partnership with governments, institutions-both governmental and nongovernmental-and individual scientists and other workers in the field of health. As the following article shows, collaboration with a university hospital department enriches both partners...

Morgan O’Connor1,4, Samuel Moulton1, Brenna M Lobb3 and Amie L Peterson2,3* 1Oregon Health and Sciences University School of Medicine, Portland, USA 2Oregon Health and Science University Department of Neurology, Parkinson’s Center of Oregon, Portland, USA 3Veterans Affairs Hospital Department of Neurology, Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center, Portland, USA 4Department of...

The last few years have witnessed an increasing interest in organizing sterilization. Every new hospital now being planned in the British Isles includes provision for a central sterile supply department and many existing hospitals are also planning such departments. Several of these are likely to be opened within the next year or two. At the present rates of progress there will be few hospitals...

BACKGROUND Hospitals have expressed no knowledge of patients' opinions regarding diversified appointment registration systems, despite efforts to develop novel appointment registration systems that assist patients and increase hospital efficiency. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the use of diversified appointment registration systems and explore the factors influencing patie...