Seamless Care Anyone?

’ ANYONE FOR TENNIS ? 199 Anyone for tennis ?

The organized medical staff: should anyone care anymore?

Every hospital has an organized medical staff, but of what value is this organizational construct in the current environment? Given the New World Order of quality improvement, patient safety, the malpractice crisis, and the multiple demands physicians struggle to accommodate on a daily basis, it is time to reconsider the role of the medical staff This article looks at the legal basis for the me...

Seamless care: The challenge between primary and secondary care systems

The changing face of diabetes management in the NHS The Audit Commission described the great variation in the quality of diabetes services across primary and secondary care in the late 1990s (Audit Commission, 2000). It recommended that the effective management of routine diabetes could be done in primary care, leaving secondary care to manage more complex patients. Models of care like Kaiser P...

Seconds, anyone?

Scientists and journalists don’t always see the world the same way. A “first” often makes news. But in science, the “second” – that is the confirmation – may actually be more important. Journalists are like toddlers, though, when it comes to seconds. They often need coaxing. Consider two recent cases. First, Neanderthal DNA. Back in 1997, reporters made a bit of a fuss when scientists announced...

Seamless anesthesia care: the handover process.

673 October 2014 I N this issue of the Journal, Saager et al.1 report on a single-institution, retrospective study of care transitions (“handovers”) during intraoperative anesthesia care. Using propensity matching to control for the effects of patient variables, surgical complexity, time of day, and surgical duration, they found a significant incremental increase in the risk for an adverse post...