there is an increasing policy emphasis on the integration of care, both within the healthcare sector and also between the health and social care sectors, with the simple aim of ensuring that individuals get the right care, in the right place, at the right time. however, implementing this simple aim is rather more complex. in this editorial, we seek to make sense of this complexity and ask: what...

in the september and november 2006 issues of nature clinical practice nephrology , two articles regarding living unrelated kidney donor transplantation alluded to the practices in iran. having served in the planning, supervision and implementation of various aspects of health care in iran, including organ transplantation (anh), and as transplant nephrologists who have actively participated in t...

PURPOSE To provide empirical evidence on key organizing constructs shaping practical, real-world integration of behavior health and primary care to comprehensively address patients' medical, emotional, and behavioral health needs. METHODS In a comparative case study using an immersion-crystallization approach, a multidisciplinary team analyzed data from observations of practice operations, in...

Scenarios involving the introduction of artificially intelligent (AI) assistive technologies in health care practices raise several ethical issues. In this paper, I discuss four objections to introducing AI assistive technologies in health care practices as replacements of human care. I analyse them as demands for felt care, good care, private care, and real care. I argue that although these ob...

The ambulatory care setting is an increasingly important component of the patient safety conversation. Inpatient safety is the primary focus of the vast majority of safety research and interventions, but the ambulatory setting is actually where most medical care is administered. Recent attention has shifted toward examining ambulatory care in order to implement better health care quality and sa...

The US spends significantly more money as a percentage of GDP on health care than any other OECD country and this amount is expected to increase exponentially [8]. In this high cost environment, two important trends have occurred: 1) the movement to managed care and 2) large investments in IS/IT (Information Systems/Information Technology). Managed care has emerged as an attempt to provide good...

OBJECTIVE Because of time constraints in the office environment, problems of concern to elderly patients may not be raised during clinic visits. To facilitate communication about geriatric health problems, we examined the impact of a strategy that used patient self-assessment data to improve community practices. DESIGN Twenty-two primary care practices were randomized to participate in the in...

AIM To investigate the frequency of different cord care practices as well recommendations to parents on cord care, along with the need to identify as well as reach the consensus on best cord care practices and other procedures in newborn care among health workers. METHODS The study was conducted among 110 health care workers at the nursery departments in two general hospitals, six community-h...

Large health care systems with varied hospital cultures, environments, and practices are continually challenged to provide safer and higher quality patient care. The authors describe their experience implementing uniform procedures for computed tomographic contrast media administration and the impact that standardization of these practices had on patient safety at a large integrated health care...

IMPORTANCE To improve the quality of health care, many researchers have suggested that health care institutions adopt management approaches that have been successful in the manufacturing and technology sectors. However, relatively little information exists about how these practices are disseminated in hospitals and whether they are associated with better performance. OBJECTIVES To describe th...