In this thought paper, Professor Steven Spear argues that the way to achieve great operational performance and value has often been misunderstood. In order to ensure that good people and good science are facilitated, rather than overwhelmed, by systems, leaders have to expand their attention from ‘what individuals do’ to ‘how the pieces come together’. High quality care and great performance in...

Population aging, rapidly increasing costs of healthcare and the growing burden of chronic disease are challenges to health systems worldwide. To meet these challenges will require new approaches to healthcare delivery and comprehensive population health management. Within the context of healthcare reform initiatives, important innovations in delivery system organization in the United States ar...

background health literacy presents an enormous challenge in the delivery of effective healthcare and quality outcomes. we evaluated the impact of low health literacy (lhl) on healthcare utilization and healthcare expenditure.   methods database analysis used medical expenditure panel survey (meps) from 2005-2008 which provides nationally representative estimates of healthcare utilization and e...

T hroughout the summer, federal plans for healthcare reform continued to stall, to the chagrin of many in the healthcare and policy communities. Even within the Clinton administration, the tension was apparent between the desire to forge ahead and the need to wait for a politically appropriate moment to unveil the health reform planafter the president's economic package and budget have passed. ...

The current healthcare delivery paradigm is defined by integrative care delivery across disparate providers and services. Therefore the ability to deliver efficient and effective healthcare services is dependent on designing and implementing interoperable systems. However, the notion of interoperability is multifaceted and complex. Although the exchange of data is often described as analogous w...

The learning healthcare system uses health information technology and the health data infrastructure to apply scientific evidence at the point of clinical care while simultaneously collecting insights from that care to promote innovation in optimal healthcare delivery and to fuel new scientific discovery. To achieve these goals, the learning healthcare system requires systematic redesign of the...

responding to critical shortages of physicians, most sub-saharan countries have scaled up training of nonphysician clinicians (npcs), resulting in a gradual but decisive shift to npcs as the cornerstone of healthcare delivery. this development should unfold in parallel with strategic rethinking about the role of physicians and with innovations in physician education and in-service training. in ...

it’s not long since the advent of pervasive computing by mark weiser and one of its main usages is in healthcare systems. as this technology has been introduced only recently in this field and because we are dealing with peoples’ lives and their data, providing a high level of privacy and security is of great importance. various studies have been performed in which a certain method has been use...

Measurement forms the basis for empirical health services research including pharmaceutical practice and policy research. The measurement process is designed to record and capture the underlying construct and concept. In healthcare, critical policy and practice discussions are based on cost, quality, and access. These concepts or constructs have to be measured and analyzed using variables to ev...