Socioeconomic trends and developments within the U.S. healthcare system have challenged rural hospitals' ability to maintain adequate operating margins and offer needed services. However, some hospitals have fared better in this negative environment than have others. To clarify factors that distinguish the most viable rural Catholic hospitals from the least viable, our study identified a group ...

The New South Wales Department of Health (NSW Health) wishes to make appropriate use of casemix data as inputs to the determination of funding levels for small rural hospitals. However, other factors such as hospital size and degree of isolation might need to be taken into account. The study reported here involved correlation of actual expenditures with those predicted by use of a casemix model...

Since the 1980s, Islamic scholars and medical experts have used the tools of Islamic law to formulate ethico-legal opinions on brain death. These assessments have varied in their determinations and remain controversial. Some juridical councils such as the Organization of Islamic Conferences' Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC-IFA) equate brain death with cardiopulmonary death, while others such as the I...

Advocates of payments for environmental services (PES) distinguish such schemes from the more common integrated conservation and development projects on the grounds that the payments for the environmental services are direct, more cost-effective, less complex institutionally, and therefore more likely to produce the desired results. Both kinds of schemes aim to achieve similar conservation and ...

This paper presents a model for investigating digitally-enabled process innovations and their impact on business network performance. The key features of the model are its focus on innovation across business networks and the assumption that benefits of investments in IT are most likely to occur when mediated by innovations in related business process capabilities. The paper presents the model a...

BACKGROUND There is widespread recognition of the problem of unsafe care and extensive efforts have been made over the last 15 years to improve patient safety. In Sweden, a new patient safety law obliges the 21 county councils to assemble a yearly patient safety report (PSR). The aim of this study was to describe the patient safety work carried out in Sweden by analysing the PSRs with regard to...

This study provides an assessment of local government progress in adaptation to marine climate change in Australia's coastal communities. Globally, coastal communities are vulnerable to a diversity of marine climate change impacts, and adaptation responses will need to be tailored to suit each unique socioecological situation. The responsibility of adaptation planning is largely placed on munic...

might be to introduce a purchaser-provider model like that introduced into the NHS. The Advisory Council on Science and Technology suggested this to Mr Waldegrave, but he turned it down. With this proposal the MRC (and the other research councils) would become purchasers of research and have no responsibility for managing providers. The units would become providers of research and would compete...

Doctoral training programs in psychology are accredited by the American Psychological Association in four areas: Clinical, Counseling, School, and Combined-Integrated (C-I) psychology. Each area of doctoral preparation in psychology has its own council, which represents its interests within the field and to external constituents. Despite the fact that Combined-Integrated training programs have ...