BACKGROUND Cost effectiveness analysis is an established technique for evaluation of delivery of health care, but its use to evaluate clinical audit is rarely reported. Thrombolysis for suspected acute myocardial infarction is a commonly used therapy of established effectiveness and an appropriate subject for audit in many healthcare settings. OBJECTIVE To measure the cost effectiveness of au...

Current policy and practice emphasises much more than ever before a need for purchasers and providers to reduce appropriately the length of hospital stay. Consequently, a number of early discharge "schemes" have been developed. This paper presents the findings from an evaluation of a "home from hospital" (HFH) scheme. The HFH service provides a maximum of six weeks' intensive domiciliary care f...

BACKGROUND Methods for the cost-effectiveness analysis of health technologies are now well established, but such methods may also have a useful role in the context of evaluating the effects of variation in applied clinical practice. This study illustrates a general methodology for the comparative analysis of applied clinical practice at alternative institutions--risk adjusted cost-effectiveness...

OBJECTIVES Hospital boards are legally responsible for safe healthcare. They need tools to assist them in their task of governing patient safety. Almost every Dutch hospital performs internal audits, but the effectiveness of these audits for hospital governance has never been evaluated. The aim of this study is to evaluate the organisation of internal audits and their effectiveness for hospital...

background and objectives: evidence shows that transfer of hospital governance to board of trustees can positively influence hospital performance. iran has initiated implementing such a transformation and a number of hospitals have been involved in this reform. this study aimed to explore the effectiveness of such a reform by examining performance profile of a sample hospital across the interve...

* Increasing demand on public hospital beds has led to what many see as a hospital bed crisis requiring substantial increases in bed numbers. By 2050, if current bed use trends persist and as the numbers of frail older patients rise exponentially, a 62% increase in hospital beds will be required to meet expected demand, at a cost almost equal to the entire current Australian healthcare budget. ...

background and objectives: efficient hospital management requires appropriate cost and price strategies. informed decision on costs and prices of healthcare services needs estimation of costs of unit services using microeconomic techniques. there is lack of knowledge and skills for such costing methods in the healthcare sector of developing countries such as iran. this study aims at detail desc...

OBJECTIVE To determine the effectiveness of an adjuvanted monovalent vaccine against pandemic influenza A/H1N1 among people with underlying chronic diseases. DESIGN Historical cohort study. SETTING Mandatory national reporting systems, 2 November 2009 to 31 January 2010, Denmark. PARTICIPANTS 388,069 people under 65 years of age with a diagnosis in the past five years of at least one unde...