BACKGROUND Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is associated with a marked economic burden, high treatment costs and decreased productivity. Although treatment strategies for SSc can have a substantial effect on patients' outcomes, it is not known whether patients with SSc consistently receive such care. Evaluation of process-of-care quality requires specification of quality indicators (QIs), clinically d...

While quality in healthcare is an essential concept, the methodology to measure the quality is in preliminary stage. Developing quality indicators seems to be inspiring concept in measuring quality in healthcare system. Clinical laboratory being the inseparable part of health care system, we have made an attempt to through a light on quality indicators in clinical laboratory. Developing key per...

background and objectives: data on patient complains can be used as a feedback to improve the quality of healthcare services. the aim of this study was to develop an indicator for reliable retrieval of statistical data on patient complaints.   methods: a triangulated study was conducted. a comprehensive literature review was done to identifying the relevant major themes. two-rounds of delphi se...

Abstract: In multi-objective optimization problems, the optimization target is to obtain a set of non-dominated solutions. Comparing solution sets is crucial in evaluating the performances of different optimization algorithms. The use of performance indicators is common in comparing those sets and, subsequently, optimization algorithms. A good solution set must be close to the Pareto-optimal fr...

Hospital readmission rate has been a long-considered quality of care indicator in adult medicine, albeit with mixed reviews. As we begin to grapple with the quality significance and preventability of readmissions in pediatrics, however, we are outpaced by movement in the insurance industry. Section 3025 of the Affordable Care Act requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reduce...

When comparing the average citation impact of research groups, universities and countries, field normalisation reduces the influence of discipline and time. Confidence intervals for these indicators can help with attempts to infer whether differences between sets of publications are due to chance factors. Although both bootstrapping and formulae have been proposed for these, their accuracy is u...

Pitch perception plays a central role in processing speech prosody. Since f0 varies from speaker to speaker and from context to context, effective pitch-range normalization is thus important to uncover intended linguistic pitch targets. It has also been speculated that voice quality may play a role in pitch-range perception. Our previous study demonstrated that spectral balance indeed effective...

An experiment was conducted to develop a plant extracts based quality indicator for monitoring aerobically packed chicken meat quality during storage at room temperature (25±1oC) until spoiled. Ripen black mulberry (Morus nigra) fruit extracts containing anthocyanins was used for developing quality indicator. Filter paper based indicator was exposed to the closed fresh meat environment. Changes...

Background and Objectives: Data on patient complains can be used as a feedback to improve the quality of healthcare services. The aim of this study was to develop an indicator for reliable retrieval of statistical data on patient complaints.   Methods: A triangulated study was conducted. A comprehensive literature review was done to identifying the relevant major themes. Two-rounds of Delphi ...