OBJECTIVE To determine the extent and pattern of treatment failure (TF) among children hospitalised with community-acquired pneumonia at a large tertiary hospital in Kenya. METHODS We followed up children aged 2-59 months with WHO-defined severe pneumonia (SP) and very severe pneumonia (VSP) for up to 5 days for TF using two definitions: (i) documentation of pre-defined clinical signs resulti...

Case management programs for homeless people have proliferated since the 1980s but some have questioned the meaning and clarity of the term case management while others have questioned its effectiveness for serving clients. This paper first attends to conceptual issues, identifying primary functions and process variables for understanding and describing case management services. The paper next ...

Background Community health worker (CHW) interventions to manage childhood illness is a strategy promoted by the global health community which involves training and supporting CHW to assess, classify and treat sick children at home, using an algorithm adapted from the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI). To inform CHW policy, the Government of Tanzania launched a program in ...

The electronic community factory (ECF) is proposed as an archetype for value creating cross-organization virtual communities of practice in which members engage actively and through domain-specific tools in the practice the community is about. In an ECF the reason for building the community is to appropriate the benefits of virtual networking for developing new products of added-value and colle...

This paper shows that performing case-based reasoning (CBR) on knowledge coming from an e-community is improved by taking into account knowledge reliability. MKM (meta-knowledge model) is a model for managing reliability of the knowledge units that are used in the reasoning process. For this, MKM uses meta-knowledge such as belief, trust and reputation, about knowledge units and users. MKM is u...

OBJECTIVE This study examined whether persons with mental illness who undergo a period of involuntary outpatient commitment continue to receive prescribed medications and avoid psychiatric hospitalization after outpatient commitment ends. METHODS Data on Medicaid pharmacy fills and inpatient treatment were used to describe patterns of medication possession and hospitalization for persons with...

OBJECTIVE This article reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of community-based services for rural areas, specifically assertive community treatment and intensive case management. Service delivery to persons with severe mental illness in rural areas is challenged by low population densities, limited services, and shortages of professionals. METHODS A comprehensive literature search ident...

This paper develops a model of standardized reproductive tract infection (RTI) management in the public sector using guidelines prepared by the National AIDS Control Organization. It also discusses the costs of upscaling the service to similar sites in Sitapur and Agra districts of Uttar Pradesh, India. The model shown in the paper conceives providing RTI case management services at the block...

This review is describing different models of case management, showing their similarities and differences with regards to the way they operate. Good relationship between patient and case manager, application of the biopsychosocial model, availability of psychosocial treatment methods and rehabilitation programs, and individual treatment plan are all important factors in case management's succes...