BACKGROUND Hospitals are under pressure from admissions of increasing numbers of older people. Older people may suffer unnecessary activity limitation after acute illnesses through lack of appropriate rehabilitation. OBJECTIVE To evaluate an early discharge and rehabilitation service for older people. DESIGN A randomised controlled trial comparing an early discharge and rehabilitation with ...

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS— We analyzed 1,376 patients with diabetes who were >65 years of age and in the 1993 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. Morbidity measures were the Katz Index of Activities of Daily Living, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, overall health perception, Charlson Comorbidity Index score, and diabetic complications. Quality of care standards were glycosylated hemo...

Coding of discharge summaries is performed in hospitals daily. We propose to study the impact the use of semantic information may have on this coding. The complementarity of structured medical terminology and medication resource is evaluated on a collection of 1,237 discharge summaries. Performances of the system are improved with the specialization of terminological data.

BACKGROUND Geriatric Rehabilitation Units (GRUs) have been established to restore functional abilities of older hospitalized patients. Although considerable health care resources have been allocated to these units, few outcome-based research studies have been reported on Canadian GRUs. AIM The aim of this paper is to report a study examining the effect of admission to a GRU on changes in pati...