Quality improvement (QI) efforts are an indispensable aspect of health care delivery, particularly in an environment of increasing financial and regulatory pressures. The ability to test predictions of proposed changes to flow, policy, staffing, and other process-level changes using discrete event simulation (DES) has shown significant promise and is well reported in the literature. This articl...

The natural character π of a finite transitive permutation group G has the form 1G + θ where θ is a character which affords a rational representation of G. We call G a QI-group if this representation is irreducible over Q. Every 2-transitive group is a QI-group, but the latter class of groups is larger. It is shown that every QI-group is 3/2transitive and primitive, and that it is either almost...

OBJECTIVE To assess the diffusion of a quality improvement (QI) programme among allied health professions in The Netherlands. DESIGN Descriptive study, based on a questionnaire distributed to allied health professionals; response rate, 63%. SETTINGS AND PARTICIPANTS All subsectors in health care were covered, including primary care and institutional care. The participants were either salari...

In this paper we present an application of the propositional SATisfiability environment to computing some simple orthogonal matrices and some interesting tasks in the area of cryptanalysis. We show how one can code a search for some kind of desired objects as a propositional formulae in such a way that their satisfying valuations code such objects. Some encouraging (and not very encouraging) ex...

Hedysari Radix (Hong Qi) is a commonly substituted material with similar functions to Astragali (Huang Qi). However, it still misused as Huang Qi, even though people know they are different species. This study aims find evidence that Hong Qi can replace in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formulas used for immunomodulation. Therefore, we evaluated the immunomodulatory effects of both medicine...

BACKGROUND The relationship between the scope and intensity of quality improvement (QI) activities and hospital performance remains unclear. This study investigated the relationship between performance, external environment, and the scope and intensity of QI activities in hospitals. METHODS The study used a longitudinal observation. Data regarding the scope and intensity of QI activities were...

The cytochrome bc1 complex (cyt bc1) is the third component of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and is the target of several potent antimalarial compounds, including the naphthoquinone atovaquone (ATV) and the 4(1H)-quinolone ELQ-300. Mechanistically, cyt bc1 facilitates the transfer of electrons from ubiquinol to cytochrome c and contains both oxidative (Qo) and reductive (Qi) cataly...

BACKGROUND De Qi is a special sensational response upon acupuncture needling. According to traditional acupuncture theory, the treatment is "effective only after Qi arrival"; that is, De Qi is an important indicator of therapeutic efficacy and good prognosis. However, it is still disputable whether De Qi improves the efficacy of acupuncture therapy. This prospective, randomized controlled trial...

De qi is a core concept of acupuncture and is necessary to produce therapeutic effect. In 2010, de qi has been received as a term in the official extension of the CONSORT Statement. However, there are few articles that discuss which factors have influences on obtaining de qi in clinical trials. This paper aims to explore these factors and give advice on trial design in order to optimize de qi i...