We interviewed hospital leaders and unit nurses in twenty-five hospitals between June and October 2008 to explore the effect of performance-based incentives. Interviewees expressed favorable impressions of the impact that incentive policies have on quality and safety. However, they raised concerns about the policies’ effects on the nurse workforce. Their concerns included the belief that perfor...

For the last 40 years British Columbia has pursued a general policy of deinstitutionalizing patients from its one large psychiatric hospital, Riverview Hospital (RVH), to a variety of alternative, community-based living and care-giving arrangements. Th is policy has not unfolded in a systematic, linear fashion, but rather it has been punctuated by interruptions and delays as policy makers and m...

BACKGROUND Hospital policy involves multiple objectives: efficiency of service delivery, pursuit of high quality care, promoting access. Funding policy based on hospital casemix has traditionally been considered to be only about promoting efficiency. DISCUSSION Formula-based funding policy can be (and has been) used to pursue a range of policy objectives, not only efficiency. These are termed...

This paper describes the methodology used and the experience gained from the application of a new secure database design approach and database security policy in a real life hospital environment. The applicability of the proposed database security policy in a major Greek general hospital is demonstrated. Moreover, the security and quality assurance of the developed prototype secure database is ...

This article reports on a project to update policy and practice in pressure-ulcer prevention in a district general hospital. A literature review was undertaken on pressure-ulcer prevention to identify the best methods for use in a district general hospital and to bring practice in line with current evidence. The literature review covered evidence-based tools for risk assessment, treatment proto...

Efficiency of the hospitals affects the price of health services. Health care payments have equity implications. Evidence on hospital performance can support to design the policy; however, the recent literature on hospital efficiency produced conflicting results. Consequently, policy decisions are uncertain. Even the most of evidence were produced by using data from high income countries. Confl...