Abstract Ethics issues are present in the daily life of every human being. This paper presents an overview difficult, yet everyday ethics dilemmas, and general rules tools helping making ethical choices. These are: distinguishing facts from values, reasoning principles, defining terms clarifying concepts, comparing cases, thought experiments, logic, recognizing avoiding errors reasoning. But al...

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A MID RISING COST pressures and the move towards greater “accountability” for reducing cost and improving patient outcomes in healthcare, the importance of effective business analytics – including IT benchmarking – is at an alltime high.1,2 With the diminishing financial incentives from meaningful use, the ability for healthcare organizations to compare areas of IT costs and staffing with known...

OBJECTIVE To study whether the Dutch participation model is a good model of participation. BACKGROUND Patient participation is on the agenda, both on the individual and the collective level. In this study, we focus on the latter by looking at the Dutch model in which patient organizations are involved in many formal decision-making processes. This model can be described as neo-corporatist. ...

Executive Overview Digitizing patient records helps healthcare organizations increase efficiency and improve patient care. Now, as part of President Obama's economic stimulus package, healthcare organizations can also receive financial benefits, and avoid penalties, by implementing digital record systems. For healthcare IT systems to live up to their true potential, however, they must maintain ...

The Institute of Medicine reports a growing demand in recent years for quality improvement within the healthcare industry. In response, numerous organizations have been involved in the development and reporting of quality measurement metrics. However, disparate data models from such organizations shift the burden of accurate and reliable metrics extraction and reporting to healthcare providers....

s the popularity of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award continues to grow, the healthcare industry has become increasingly interested in its benefits. The Malcolm Baldrige Model for Performance Excellence has now been widely emulated at local, national and international levels as a result of its success in creating strategic and operational performance improvement over the past 16 years...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to contribute toward a deeper understanding of the new roles, responsibilities, and job characteristics of employees in Lean healthcare organizations. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The paper is based on three cases studies of healthcare organizations that are regarded as successful examples of Lean applications in the healthcare context. Data were collected ...

BACKGROUND The demand for international volunteer experiences to promote global health and nutrition is increasing and numerous studies have documented the experiences of the international volunteers who travel abroad; however, little is known about effective practices from the perspective of partner organizations. This study aims to understand how variables such as the skill-level of volunteer...

BACKGROUND In healthcare change interventions, on-the-ground learning about the implementation process is often lost because of a primary focus on outcome improvements. This paper describes the Learning Evaluation, a methodological approach that blends quality improvement and implementation research methods to study healthcare innovations. METHODS Learning Evaluation is an approach to multi-o...