OBJECTIVE To develop and test a statistical model which correctly predicts the approval of outpatient referrals when reviewed by a specialty service based on nine discriminating variables. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional study. SETTING Large public county hospital system in a southern US city. PARTICIPANTS Written documents and associated data from 500 random adult referrals made by ...

BACKGROUND The self-consciousness and practicality of preferentially prescribed essential medicines (EMs) are not high enough in county hospitals. The purposes of this study were to use the information-motivation-behavioral skills (IMB) model to identify the predictors of essential medicines prescribing behavior (EMPB) among doctors and to examine the association between demographic variables, ...

Objective To study predictors of symptom relief six months after septoplasty using data from the Swedish National Septoplasty Register. Participants This is a retrospective register study of adult patients undergoing septoplasty in Sweden in 2003-2012. Outcome Relief of nasal symptoms was analysed in relation to age, gender, size of hospital performing the surgery, addition of turbinoplasty...

Introduction: Road dust is a group of solid particles that are presented in the urban areas and are originated from both natural and human-induced sources. This study aims to determine concentrations of heavy metals in urban dusts in Behbahan to identify their natural or anthropogenic sources. Materials and Methods: In this study, a total of 20 samples were collected from main roads with diffe...

OBJECTIVES Chinese county hospitals have been excessively enlarging their scale during the healthcare reform since 2009. The purpose of this paper is to examine the technical efficiency and productivity of county hospitals during the reform process, and to determine whether, and how, efficiency is affected by various factors. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS 114 sample county hospitals were selected ...