BACKGROUND Urgent referral for suspected cancer was implemented in Denmark on 1 April 2008 to reduce the secondary care interval (i.e. the time interval from the general practitioner's first referral of a patient to secondary health care until treatment is initiated). However, knowledge about the association between the secondary care interval and urgent referral remains scarce. The aim of this...

BACKGROUND Surprisingly little is known about the most efficient organization of admissions to an emergency hospital. It is important to know, who should be in front when the GP requests an acute admission. The aim of the study was to analyse how experienced ED nurses perform when assessing requests for admissions, compared with hospital physicians. METHODS Before- and after ED nurse assessme...

OBJECTIVE This study aims to explore the quality of referral letters from different health institutions to Abha Psychiatric Hospital, the only psychiatric center in Asir region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. METHODS In this descriptive study, a total of 582 consecutive referral letters to Abha Psychiatric Hospital, during the first half of 1998, were evaluated for the components that are supposed ...

An eight fold rise in asthma admissions to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children, Brighton occurred over the 15 year period 1971-85. The cause was an increase in the number of children seen, rather than increased readmission. The initial rise was associated with the introduction of nebulised salbutamol in 1976. The children concerned were mainly over 5 years old. Three years later came...

BACKGROUND Medical literature has demonstrated that referral hospitals often receive inadequate information about the care and medications their patients received from referring hospitals. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to assess the completeness of referral letters, especially the medication history, for patient presenting at the children emergency room of a teaching hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. ...

Vida Demarin, MD, PhD, Prof., University Department of Neurology, Sestre milosrdnice University Hospital, Referral Center for Neurovascular Disorders of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of the Republic Croatia, Zagreb Arijana Lovrenčić-Huzjan, MD, PhD, Prof., University Department of Neurology, Sestre milosrdnice University Hospital, Referral Center for Neurovascular Disorders of the M...

Introduction We present a new approach to evaluate the importance of ambulatory nephrology care in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Methods An anonymized health claims database of German insurance companies was searched in a retrospective analysis for patients with CKD using the codes of the International Classification of Diseases, 10th German modification. A total of 105,219 pati...

Malaria remains a major health problem of our time. The disease plagues human society and impacts obnoxious and immeasurable burden on human population. Since children particularly are the worse affected, it is pertinent to examine some of the demographic factors connections in malaria incidence. This paper is aimed at modeling length of stay using covariates from hospital register and also ass...

OBJECTIVE To identify the most important referring parties in the Finnish health care system. DESIGN A record linkage study based on nationwide administrative registers. SETTING The hospital discharge register during 1996 to 2000. SUBJECTS The total Finnish population and the population of four hospital districts. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Discharges of individuals by the most important ref...