Background and Objectives: Many Iranian public hospitals are faced with serious financial challenges such as shortage of income and heavy debts. Nevertheless, many of the healthcare services are often remained unearned for not being included in the clinical records or patient bill, resulting in considerable loss of legitimate hospital in‌come. Given the limited studies in this area in Iran, the...

Viraj Bhise and Houston Veterans Affairs Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety, Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Section of Health Services Research, Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; and Division of Management, Policy and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Science Center at Ho...

BACKGROUND In September 2005, Texas Children's Hospital initiated a protocol for all neonates presenting to the emergency department (ED) with hyperbilirubinemia based on the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines. As part of the protocol, low-risk neonates with hyperbilirubinemia requiring phototherapy are treated in the ED observation unit (EDOU). OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to co...

Suicidal inpatients' perspectives on the experience of constant observation by staff or lay workers were sought through interviews using open-ended questions with 14 patients for whom constant observation ranged from 16 hours to 3.5 days. Interview transcripts were analyzed using phenomenological methods to determine common themes. The three major themes that emerged from participants' response...

past few years. In the cost discussion in the psychiatric inpatient setting, length of inpatient stay is of great concern: duration of treatment and cost per case are closely correlated, and costs can be influenced via this indicator because, unlike in somatic medicine, the daily care rates are fixed (1). Within the specialty psychiatry and psychotherapy, the health insurance companies are dema...

OBJECTIVE To study the incidence and risk factors of psychiatric inpatient suicide within a national cohort representing all psychiatric hospital admissions. METHOD This national prospective register-based study followed all psychiatric hospital admissions in Denmark from the date of patient admission until patient discharge or inpatient suicide over a 10-year study period from 1997 through 2...

National inpatient and ambulatory surgery data were combined to examine changes over time in the location and amount of surgical care. The main pattern was a decline in the rate of inpatient operations that was outweighed by growth in ambulatory operations. However, the rate of inpatient operations did not decrease for patients age 65 years or over, despite the growth in ambulatory surgery. Oth...

Background. Poor inpatient glycaemic control has a prevalence exceeding 30% and results in increased length of stay and higher rates of hospital complications and inpatient mortality. The aim of this study was to improve inpatient glycaemic control by developing an alert system to process point-of-care blood glucose (POC-BG) results. Methods. Microsoft Excel Macros were developed for the proces...