D uring the past several years, one of the most perplexing issues for surgeons has been the assessment of quality of care. We, however, owe it to ourselves and our patients to master the substantive issues that underlie current discussions about this subject. What is quality care? Many definitions have been proposed. Donabedian developed the classic triad for measuring quality in health care: s...

Hospital education departments can better align with the strategic direction of the organization, effectively prioritize work processes, and focus on what matters most to the organization when the organization adopts an assessment process known as the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence. This article describes the Baldrige assessment process, a framework of seven criteria b...

1. Adapt an existing quality assessment tool (the Quality Indicator for Rehabilitative Care QuIRC) and an existing Patient Reported Outcome Measure (the Client Assessment of Treatment CAT) for mental health supported accommodation services. We will identify any QuIRC and CAT items that require amendment through review by a service user reference group, an expert panel, and focus groups with sta...

Due to an identified need for formal assessment, a small team of librarians designed and administered a survey to gauge the quality of customer service at their academic health sciences library. Though results did not drive major changes to services, several important improvements were implemented and a process was established to serve as a foundation for future use. This article details the as...

Objectives: Participation is defines as involvement within a life situation and the ultimate outcome for individuals with disabilities. One of the most common cause of chronic disability that restricts participation of individuals is Cerebral palsy (CP). The main goal of rehabilitation is empowering participation of their clients in different life areas. To achieve changes in participation, ass...

OBJECTIVE To identify, from a systematic review of the literature, the attributes of Family Medicine (FM) that influence the primary health care outcome as measured by users' satisfaction, improvement in patient health and in costs. DATA SOURCES Literature search of Medline and the Cochrane library using MeSH terms 'Primary Health' or 'Family Practice' or 'Family Physicians' and 'Outcome Asse...

Because medical technology is the most important controllable component of health spending growth, the success of strategies for limiting spending growth depends upon their impact on technology dissemination. Technology assessment is fundamental to any strategy for controlling the adoption of medical technologies. Cost-effectiveness analysis holds particular promise as a method for evaluating a...

OBJECTIVES Internet-based health behaviour interventions have variable effects on health-related outcomes. Effectiveness may be improved by optimizing the design of interventions. This study examined the specific effect on engagement of providing two different design features - tailoring and self-assessment. DESIGN Three versions of an Internet-delivered intervention to support the self-care ...

OBJECTIVE This pilot study examined collaborative, goal-focused therapy to determine its effects on performance of self-care activities, including eating, grooming, bathing, upper body dressing, lower-body dressing, and toileting. METHOD Thirty-one patients at a rehabilitation hospital, divided between control and experimental groups, comprised the sample. Participants' performances on self-c...

One of the most controversial topics in the U.S. is the issue of accessibility to health services by U.S. residents. This issue is most critical to U.S. Hispanic residents living along the U.S.-Mexico border who have been identified as having low health standards and low socio-economic conditions when compared to the rest of the state and the country. The availability of lower cost health servi...