Health information technology (HIT) is engineered to promote improved quality and efficiency of care, and reduce medical errors. Healthcare organizations have made significant investments in HIT tools and the electronic medical record (EMR) is a major technological advance. The Department of Veterans Affairs was one of the first large healthcare systems to fully implement EMR. The Veterans Heal...

The health care system in China has been undergoing reforms for the past three decades. New policies and regulations are being developed to better meet the health needs of over a billion people. As reform programs expand, the need for scientific evidence increases, to enable accurate evaluation of the impact of new policies. In this context, health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) will be...

The field of occupational therapy, as with all facets of health care, has been profoundly affected by the changing climate of health care delivery. The combination of cost-effectiveness and quality of care has become the benchmark for and consequent drive behind the rise of managed health care delivery systems. The spawning of outcomes research is in direct response to the need for comparative ...

BACKGROUND Outcomes research involves the secondary analysis of data collected routinely by clinical services, in order to judge the effectiveness of interventions and policy initiatives. It permits the study of large databases of patients who are representative of 'real world' practice. However, there are potential problems with this observational design. AIMS To establish the strengths and ...

CONTEXT A fundamental premise of medical education is that faculty should educate trainees, that is, students and residents, to provide high quality patient care. Yet, there is little research on the effect of medical education on patient outcomes. OBJECTIVE A content analysis of leading medical education journals was performed to determine the primary foci of medical education research, usin...

OBJECTIVES To identify key health outcomes, beyond morbidity and mortality, regarded as important in children and young people with neurodisability, and their parents. DESIGN Qualitative research incorporating a thematic analysis of the data supported by the Framework Approach; the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provided a theoretical foundation. SE...

Evidence-based (science-based) care is the prevailing paradigm in the health sciences. This paper briefly reviews the basic concepts of evidence-based care. Assessment of scientific evidence including information retrieval, evaluation of the quality of evidence, and finally the synthesis of collected evidence is described. Practitioner approach to evidence-based care through the twin modalities...

BACKGROUND A growing body of research has found that people with disabilities experience lower health status and an excess burden of disease relative to the general US population. However, the population of people with disabilities is quite diverse. Thus, it is important to understand health differences between subgroups of people with disabilities in order to most effectively target interventi...

OBJECTIVE To examine methods for generating evidence on health outcomes in patients with rare diseases. DESIGN Methodological review of existing literature. SETTING PubMed, Embase, and Academic Search Premier searched for articles describing innovative approaches to randomized trial design and analysis methods and methods for conducting observational research in patients with rare diseases....

Society makes substantial investments in biomedical research, searching for ways to better human health. The product of this research is principally information published in scientific journals. Continued investment in science relies on society's confidence in the accuracy, honesty, and utility of research results. A recent focus on productivity has dominated the competitive evaluation of scien...