BACKGROUND Emergency departments (EDs) are increasingly overcrowded by walk-in patients. However, little is known about health-economic consequences resulting from long waiting times and inefficient use of specialised resources. We have evaluated a quality improvement project of a Swiss urban hospital: In 2009, a triage system and a hospital-associated primary care unit with General Practitione...

• Resource utilization estimates were extrapolated to cost estimates by multiplying the frequency of resource utilization to unit costs for specific resources. Total individual costs for hospitalizations, ER visits, physician visits, and laboratory and imaging tests were calculated. Mean cost per month and 95% CIs (confidence interval) are reported for costs based on the assumption of a normal ...

the existing works considering the flow-based discount factor in the hub and spoke problems, assume that increasing the amount of flow passing through each edge of network continuously decreases the unit flow transportation cost. although a higher volume of flow allows for using wider links and consequently cheaper transportation, but the unit of flow enjoys more discounts, quite like replacing...

Previous estimates of childhood lead poisoning prevention benefits have quantified the present value of some health benefits, but not the costs of lead paint hazard control or the benefits associated with housing and energy markets. Because older housing with lead paint constitutes the main exposure source today in the US, we quantify health benefits, costs, market value benefits, energy saving...

OBJECTIVE Intensive insulin therapy (IIT) reduces morbidity and mortality in patients in surgical intensive care units. The aim of this study is to assess the effect of IIT using a closed-loop system in hepatectomized patients. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Patients were randomly assigned to receive IIT using a closed-loop system: an artificial pancreas (AP group) or conventional insulin therapy ...

BACKGROUND The costs of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) screening have been frequently reported, but total GDM-related health care costs compared to the health care costs of women without GDM have not been reported. The aim of this study was to analyse GDM-related health care costs among women with an elevated risk of GDM. METHODS The study was based on a cluster-randomised GDM prevention...

Maternal syphilis results in an estimated 500,000 stillbirths and neonatal deaths annually in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the existence of national guidelines for antenatal syphilis screening, syphilis testing is often limited by inadequate laboratory and staff services. Recent availability of inexpensive rapid point-of-care syphilis tests (RST) can improve access to antenatal syphilis screenin...

BACKGROUND There is a pressing need to include cost data in the Lives Saved Tool (LiST). This paper proposes a method that combines data from both the WHO CHOosing Interventions that are Cost-Effective (CHOICE) database and the OneHealth Tool (OHT) to develop unit costs for delivering child and maternal health services, both alone and bundled. METHODS First, a translog cost function is estima...

BACKGROUND There is dearth of evidence on provider cost of contracted out services particularly for Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH). The evidence base is weak for policy makers to estimate resources required for scaling up contracting. This paper ascertains provider unit costs and expenditure distribution at contracted out government primary health centers to inform the development of optimal...

minimizing production costs for a certain amount of product is one of the main concerns for managers of agricultural and animal husbandry units. much of the cost of a unit of livestock (almost 75%) is related to methods of nutrition and ration. accordingly, using some methods to reduce costs, including methods of mathematical programming, is required. the linear programming model was used as th...