Hospital performance: Efficiency or quality? Can we have both with IT?

Hospital performance: Efficiency or quality? Can we have both with IT?

The influence of IT investment on hospital efficiency and quality are of great interest to healthcare executives as well as insurers. Few studies have examined how IT investments influence both efficiency and quality or whether there is an optimal IT investment level that influences both in the desired direction. Decision makers in healthcare wonder if there are tradeoffs between their pursuit ...

Can we have it both ways?

Cost control, equity and efficiency: can we have it all?

Introduction On March 1, 2006, the Government of Ontario enacted the Local Health System Integration Act, which created 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) (2005, 2006). These organizations are charged with strategic purchasing; they will not directly provide services. Each LHIN is responsible for planning, integrating and funding healthcare services in its region. About two thirds of ...

Sampling and Soundness: Can We Have Both?

Recent research on model counting in CNF formulas has shown that a certain sampling method can yield results that are sound with a provably high probability. The key idea is to iteratively restrict the search space, and to randomly choose which part to consider. The expected value of this sampled count is equal to the real count. If one minimizes over several trials, and purposefully underestim...

Trustworthy Software: Why we need it, Why we don't have it, How we can get it

We have become increasingly dependent on a national technological fabric that contains software, computers, and communication networks as essential components. Unfortunately, our ability to build affordable software systems for which there exists compelling evidence that the systems delivers their services in a manner that satisfies certain critical properties has not kept pace with the importa...