This paper reports the findings of a review of the literature on emergency admissions to hospital for older people in the UK, undertaken between May and June 2014 at the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham. This review sought to explore: the rate of in/appropriate emergency admissions of older people in the UK; the way this is defined in the literature; solutions propose...

In 2008, Medicare implemented a policy limiting reimbursement to hospitals for treating avoidable hospital-acquired conditions (HACs). Although the policy will expand nationally to Medicaid programs in 2011, little is known about the impact on safety net hospitals. The authors conducted interviews with 60 chief quality officers and 55 chief financial officers from safety net hospitals to explor...

BACKGROUND As in many health care systems, some Canadian jurisdictions have begun shifting away from global hospital budgets. Payment for episodes of care has begun to be implemented. Starting in 2012, the Province of Ontario implemented hospital funding reforms comprising three elements: Global Budgets; Health Based Allocation Method (HBAM); and Quality-Based Procedures (QBP). This evaluation ...

Antibiotic use is widely accepted as being responsible for the selection and maintenance of antibiotic resistance. It is less obvious, however, that it is also responsible for increasing transmissibility and pathogenicity of many multiresistant bacteria and may actually be increasing the number of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Antibiotic stewardship should be given much more emphasis in ...

BACKGROUND English alcohol policy is implemented at local government level, leading to variations in how it is put into practice. We evaluated whether differences in the presence or absence of cumulative impact zones and the 'intensity' of licensing enforcement--both aimed at regulating the availability of alcohol and modifying the drinking environment--were associated with harm as measured by ...

The book provides a well documented basic overview of the main developments and dilemmas in the field. It contains eleven chapters, the first sketching conceptualisations of mental illness and public health issues over time, especially the divide between the medical model and the social causation model developed in antipsychiatry. The second chapter resumes developments in policy making on stra...

Investment in community matron service development is an important feature of health policy in the UK, and underpins a national strategy to improve care for people with long-term conditions. These new services are under pressure to demonstrate added value in terms of patient experience and a reduction in unplanned hospital bed usage. The focus of this article is an evaluation of community matro...

Thirty-two cases of suicide or self-injury in which I served as a medicolegal consultant are reviewed. Suits involving suicide have increased to 18 to 25 percent of psychiatric practice litigation. The demography of suicide is discussed and contrasted with the population studied; this study stresses the problem of the young, unstable, and poorly predictable patient. Considerations in risk manag...

As businesses cut jobs and benefits including health insurance, patients may come to your practice with financial problems in addition to their medical ones. Assisting these patients without hurting your practice requires a little prevention and preplanning and some extra attention from your office staff. The good news is that the policies and procedures you put in place during these tough time...

This paper studies the efficacy of China’s financial reforms in helping the central monetary authority to achieve its goals of macroeconomic stabilization. A local–local monetary game is presented which examines the investment competition between local governments in different hypothetical financial settings. It is shown that direct means of credit control and indirect instruments of monetary p...