BACKGROUND Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital is the only specialized Hospital for the management of multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB and extensively drug-resistant (XDR)-TB cases in Gauteng Province. In South Africa, there is a mismatch between numbers of individuals with a laboratory diagnosis of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and those being referred for the initiation of specialist treatment. W...

With the growth of the Internet, hospitals have applied HL7 (Health Level Seven) to exchange data between them. The referral system is identified as an appropriate application system. The effect of referral is to transfer the patient to a suitable hospital in a timely fashion, and to arrange appropriate treatment for the patient. Taking advantage of the Internet to exchange referral data can, n...

Citation: Rossi H, Virtala A-M, Raekallio M, Rahkonen E, Rajamäki MM and Mykkänen A (2018) Comparison of Tracheal Wash and Bronchoalveolar Lavage Cytology in 154 Horses With and Without Respiratory Signs in a Referral Hospital Over 2009−2015. Front. Vet. Sci. 5:61. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2018.00061 comparison of Tracheal Wash and Bronchoalveolar lavage cytology in 154 horses With and Without respir...

Retrospective Study of the Pattern Antibiotic Use in Hawassa University Referral Hospital Pediatric Ward, Southern EthiopiaMinyahil A. Woldu,Sultan Suleman,Netsanet Workneh and Haftay Berhane

Patient choice is not new to the National Health Service (NHS). The nationalisation of hospitals at the founding of the NHS made it possible for a patient to go to any NHS hospital with a referral from a general practitioner (GP). In practice, however, GPs made these decisions on behalf of their patients and, for the majority of the 60-odd years since the inception of the NHS, patient flows to ...

BACKGROUND The referral letter is an important document facilitating the transfer of care from a general practitioner (GP) to secondary care. Hospital doctors have often criticised the quality and content of referral letters, and the effectiveness of improvement efforts remains uncertain. METHODS A cluster randomised trial was conducted using referral templates for patients in four diagnostic...

BACKGROUND Limited data are available on how the timing and setting of palliative care (PC) referral can affect end-of-life care. In this retrospective cohort study, the authors examined how the timing and setting of PC referral were associated with the quality of end-of-life care. METHODS All adult patients residing in the Houston area who died of advanced cancer between September 1, 2009 an...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether there is regional variation in environmental (non-medical) factors affecting referral decisions of family physicians (FPs). DESIGN Cross-sectional interview survey. SETTING Nova Scotia. PARTICIPANTS A random sample of 125 FPs grouped into 1 of 5 functionally defined geographic regions of Nova Scotia (25 in each group). Groupings were based on access to gener...

The quality of anticoagulant treatment of ambulatory patients is affected by the content of referral letters and administrative processes. To assess these influences a method was developed to audit against the hospital standard the referral of patients to one hospital anticoagulant clinic in a prospective study of all (80) new patients referred to the clinic over eight months. Administrative in...