Study objectives: To determine the validity of physical and mental unhealthy days as summary measures for county health status and to forward a method for examining county level health trends using a single year of data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Design: The study analysed geographical variation in physical and mental unhealthy days at the state and county leve...

OBJECTIVE Los Angeles County has the largest population of any county in the nation. Population-based estimates of health conditions for Los Angeles County are based primarily on telephone surveys, which are known to underestimate conditions of public health importance. This report presents the prevalence of selected health conditions for civilian noninstitutionalized adults aged 20 and over li...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate prescription patterns and influencing factors in Chinese county hospitals. METHODS Prescription quality was evaluated by five indicators proposed by WHO/INRUD. A questionnaire for doctors was designed by our research group. All internists, surgeons, obstetricians, gynecologists and pediatricians from 10 county hospitals in Anhui province were asked to...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of a clinic-based pediatric literacy intervention on a multilingual population. BACKGROUND Clinic-based literacy interventions are effective among English- and Spanish-speaking children. No data exist for multilingual populations. SETTING Pediatric clinic in an urban county hospital. Design/Methods. Reading practices of 2 cross-sectional groups were ass...

This paper describes and evaluates the budgeting and planning processes in public hospitals in Kenya. We used a qualitative case study approach to examine these processes in two hospitals in Kenya. We collected data by in-depth interviews of national level policy makers, hospital managers, and frontline practitioners in the case study hospitals (n = 72), a review of documents, and non-participa...

BACKGROUND In 2013, Kenya transitioned into a devolved system of government with a central government and 47 semi-autonomous county governments. In this paper, we report early experiences of devolution in the Kenyan health sector, with a focus on public county hospitals. Specifically, we examine changes in hospital autonomy as a result of devolution, and how these have affected hospital functio...

Objective: To study how ear and rectal body temperatures relate to each other over time in febrile patients. Methods: Descriptive cohort study with repeated measurements. The setting was a Unit for Infectious Diseases at a county hospital in Sweden. Patients, ≥ 18 years, admitted for suspected infection and with a rectal or ear temperature of ≥ 37.5◦C were invited. 16 females and 24 men, 19 to ...

BACKGROUND Previous research suggests that the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist time-out reduces communication failures and medical complications and supports development of better safety attitudes. Previous research also indicates that different values can affect the implementation of interventions. OBJECTIVE To investigate the actual usage of the checklist in practice and...

PURPOSE Epilepsy is a chronic condition that is best treated in the outpatient clinic setting. However, many epilepsy patients use the hospital emergency room (ER) as a primary resource for seizure management. We studied characteristics of these patients in comparison with patients attending an epilepsy clinic. METHODS We reviewed ER data of patients seen in 2002 and 2003 for seizures, in Van...

OBJECTIVE The economic benefits of reducing emergency department (ED) crowding are potentially substantial as they may decrease hospital length of stay. Hospital administrators and public officials may therefore be motivated to implement crowding protocols. We sought to identify a potential cost of ED crowding by evaluating the contribution of excess ED length of stay (LOS) to overall hospital ...