Although the coding of medical data is expected to benefit both patients and the health care system, its implementation as a manual process often represents a poorly attractive workload for the physician. For epidemiological purpose, we developed a simple automatic coding system based on string matching, which was designed to process free-text sentences stating reasons for hospital referral, as...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the documentation of advance directive (ADs) and physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST) with acceptance of palliative care (PC) services referral among patients with cancer. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed veterans with advanced cancers at the Veterans Administration Palo Alto Health Care System. Chi-square tests estimated AD and POLST documentation ...

OBJECTIVES To analyse spatial and temporal patterns in patients referred to a cancer genetics service in order to monitor service utilization and accessibility. METHODS Postcodes of patients during a 4-year period were used to examine spatial patterns using a Geographical Information System (GIS). Referral rates were compared visually and statistically to explore yearly variation for administ...

BACKGROUND In Japan, approximately 0.9% and 1% of the whole population are infected with HBV and HCV, respectively. Doctors from departments other than gastroenterology often order viral hepatitis tests before an invasive examination or an operation. However, the notification of positive results to the patients and linkage to care is not appropriately performed. The in-hospital alert system was...

The number of mental health courts in the United States is rapidly increasing, from one in 1997 to nearly 100 in 2004. However, to date there is comparatively little research regarding these specialty courts. The present study reports data on the referral and disposition decision-making processes of seven mental health courts. Information on all referrals to the seven courts over a three-month ...

Web hierarchy can be utilized for setting up an effective referral service among trusted parties such that an alternative path for web service can be made available, even when the target or destination server is under DDoS attacks. In our proposed referral service, we are employing a third party server for protecting a hierarchy of websites from DDoS attacks. The security architecture is design...

background: despite the positive impact of cardiac rehabilitation (cr) on quality of life and mortality, the majority of people who could benefit from this program fail to participate in it. the lack of referral from the physician is a common reason that patients give for not seeking cr. the objective of this study was to compare factors affecting cr referral by cardiologists. methods: a cross-...

T improve operational efficiencies while providing state of the art healthcare services, hospitals rely on information technology enabled physician referral systems (IT-PRS). This study examines learning curves in an IT-PRS setting to determine whether agents achieve performance improvements from cumulative experience at different rates and how information technologies transform the learning dy...

OBJECTIVE Our aim is to review, and qualitatively evaluate, the aims and measures of social referral programmes. Our first objective is to identify the aims of social referral initiatives. Our second objective is to identify the measures used to evaluate whether the aims of social referral were met. DESIGN Literature review. BACKGROUND Social referral programmes, also called social prescrib...