INTRODUCTION Fungal contamination in hospitals has been a major health concern, especially in immunosuppressed patients. Construction programs increase the risk of fungal contaminations in hospitals. This study aimed to monitor and compare fungal contamination in two hospitals in Bandar Abbas, Iran, one of which was undergoing construction. Furthermore, the study determined the seasonal variati...

Emergency visits are rising nationally, whereas the number of emergency departments is shrinking. However, volume has not increased uniformly at all emergency departments. It is unclear what factors account for this variability in emergency volume growth rates. The objective of this study was to test the association of hospital and population characteristics and the effect of hospital closures ...

IN May andi June of last year I was one of those nominated to represent the Royal Victoria Hospital on a visit to some European hospitals. Ihe delegation, which consisted of members of the Board of Management and of the Visiting Staff of the hospital, had been instructed by the Board to enquire into hospital conditions abroad so that the plans under consideration for our own future buildling op...

BACKGROUND Establishing a stroke unit (SU) in every hospital may be infeasible because of limited resources. In Australia, it is recommended that hospitals that admit ≥100 strokes per year should have a SU. We aimed to describe differences in processes of care and outcomes among hospitals with and without SUs admitting at least 100 patients/year. METHODS National stroke audit data of 40 conse...

This paper describes and evaluates the budgeting and planning processes in public hospitals in Kenya. We used a qualitative case study approach to examine these processes in two hospitals in Kenya. We collected data by in-depth interviews of national level policy makers, hospital managers, and frontline practitioners in the case study hospitals (n = 72), a review of documents, and non-participa...

There has been much opposition, voiced most notably in the Tunbridge Report, to general-practitioner access to hospital rehabilitation services. Co-operation between general practitioners, physiotherapists, and the consultant with responsibility for the physiotherapy department at a general district hospital has provided an efficient open-access service. This service has been welcomed by the ge...

INTRODUCTION We studied the richness and abundance of ant species, their bacteria and the bacteria isolated from patient clinical samples. METHODS Ants were collected with baited traps at 64 sites in a public hospital in São Luis, State of Maranhão, Brazil. RESULTS In total, 1,659 ants from 14 species were captured. The most frequent species were Crematogaster victima, Solenopsis saevissima...

Public hospitals are disproportionate providers of health care to America's indigent and minority populations. These institutions face an increasingly hostile environment, marked by budget reductions, rapid growth of Medicaid managed care, and an ideology that promotes privatization of the safety net. To survive, public hospitals must overcome problems of financing, quality, and governance that...

RATIONALE Moving patients from low-performing hospitals to high-performing hospitals may improve patient outcomes. These transfers may be particularly important in critical care, where small relative improvements can yield substantial absolute changes in survival. OBJECTIVE To characterize the existing critical care network in terms of the pattern of transfers. METHODS In a retrospective co...

OBJECTIVE We sought to determine whether "best hospitals," as defined by the US News & World Report or HealthGrades, have lower mortality rates than all other American hospitals for cancer surgery. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional study. SETTING Medicare database (2005-2006). PATIENTS All patients with a diagnosis of malignancy who underwent pancreatectomy, esophagectomy, and colectom...