Children with medical complexity are a subset of patients with special health care needs whose "health and quality of life depend on integrating health care between a primary care medical home, tertiary care services, and other important loci of care such as transitional care facilities, rehabilitation units, the home, the school, and other community based settings," according to Cohen et al. T...

BACKGROUND Medicaid waiver home and community-based long-term care services (HCBS) may provide a partial solution to the escalating costs of long-term care. Persons with dementia can have complex caregiving needs; it is unknown whether their expenditures and resource utilization differ between community-based versus institutional settings. OBJECTIVE To compare expenditures and resource utiliz...

BACKGROUND Because abnormal vital signs indicate the potential for clinical deterioration, it is logical to make emergency physicians immediately aware of those patients who present with abnormal vital signs. OBJECTIVES To determine if a clinical triggers program in the emergency department (ED) setting that utilized predetermined abnormal vital signs to activate a rapid assessment by an emer...

OBJECTIVE Permanent visual impairment has been reported to occur in up to 19% of GCA patients. The aim of this study was to examine whether implementation of a fast-track approach could reduce the rate of permanent visual impairment and inpatient days of care in GCA patients. METHODS A fast-track outpatient GCA clinic (FTC) was implemented in the Department of Rheumatology, Hospital of Southe...

The management of inpatient hyperglycemia is a focus of quality improvement projects across many hospital systems while remaining a point of controversy among clinicians. The association of inpatient hyperglycemia with suboptimal hospital outcomes is accepted by clinical care teams; however, the clear benefits of targeting hyperglycemia as a mechanism to improve hospital outcomes remain content...

In the background of ongoing health sector reforms in India, the paper investigates the magnitude and trends in out-of-pocket and catastrophic payments for key population sub-groups. Data from three rounds of nationally representative consumer expenditure surveys (1999-2000, 2004-05 and 2011-12) were pooled to assess changes over time in a range of out-of-pocket -related outcome indicators for ...

BACKGROUND Patient experience is a key feature of quality improvement in modern health-care delivery. Measuring patient experience is one of several tools used to assess and monitor the quality of health services. This study aims to develop a tool for assessing patient experience with inpatient care in public hospitals in Hong Kong. METHODS Based on the General Inpatient Questionnaire (GIQ) f...