The Department of Health has published the contract about to be imposed on junior doctors in England, along with a related “equality analysis” and a “family test.” 2 Evenwith an imposed contract, the government has duties under the Equalities Act: UK law forbids direct discrimination against women and disabled people. And the department’s self penned analysis concludes that the contract is “fai...

Background In times of financial hardship, making innovative treatments affordable for society, accessible for patients and profitable for pharmaceutical companies is a challenge. Reimbursement is often threatened by uncertainties about the financial impact or evidence for a treatment. A contractual agreement between the payer and pharmaceutical company can link reimbursement to financial thres...

BACKGROUND Seasonal variations in asthma are widely recognised. This study was undertaken to investigate the relative differences in seasonal patterns by age as they impact on episodes of care in general practice, hospital admissions, and deaths. METHODS General practice episode data from the Weekly Returns Service of the Royal College of General Practitioners, hospital admissions for asthma ...

OBJECTIVES  To determine the accuracy of coding of admissions for stroke on weekdays versus weekends and any impact on apparent outcome. DESIGN  Prospective population based stroke incidence study and a scoping review of previous studies of weekend effects in stroke. SETTING  Primary and secondary care of all individuals registered with nine general practices in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom ...

BACKGROUND Cancer care usually involves several health professionals from different parts of the health care system. Often, the GP has an important role. Patients' experiences of continuity and support may be related to characteristics of health care, disease or patients. OBJECTIVES To investigate Danish cancer patients' experiences of their contact to the GP and the cooperation between the G...

BACKGROUND German diagnosis-related groups (G-DRG) have been introduced in Germany as a reimbursement system for in-patient care. The aim of this study was to report data-based experiences from the introduction process and to evaluate the impact on in-patient dermatology. METHODS A quantitative analysis including clinical data from two large university centres of dermatology over a time perio...

BACKGROUND Case management is widely promoted as a means of ensuring continuity of care, improving patient outcomes, and achieving efficient management of resources. Community matrons have been introduced recently as specialists in the case management of patients with multiple complex problems. AIM To understand how nurse case managers are seen by GPs and NHS managers. SETTING (1) Telephone...

This is the second part of a series of papers dealing with an extensive class of analytic difference operators admitting reflectionless eigenfunctions. In the first part, the pertinent difference operators and their reflectionless eigenfunctions are constructed from given “spectral data”, in analogy with the IST for reflectionless Schrödinger and Jacobi operators. In the present paper, we intro...

BACKGROUND Emergency admission rates have been rising steadily in recent years, with the majority of the increase owing to emergency medical admissions. Possible causative factors include changing demography, incidence of disease, admission thresholds, multiple admissions, and appropriateness of admission. AIM To investigate the impact of patient and practice factors on variance in general pr...

OBJECTIVES Mobile JXTA (Juxtapose) gaining momentum and has attracted the interest of doctors and patients through P2P service that transmits messages. Audio and video can also be transmitted through JXTA. The use of mobile streaming mechanism with the support of mobile hospital management and healthcare system would enable better interaction between doctors, nurses, and the hospital. Experimen...