determination of pre-hospital delay time of patients with acute myocardial infarction and seeking ways of speeding up the time for reperfusion is an important factor to lower mortality in these patients. this is a cross-sectional study to determine pre-hospital delay time, its components, and related causes and conditions, obtained in 375 patients with prolonged chest pain referred to four hosp...

OBJECTIVE To identify the hospital admission data set that best captures the incidence of acute poisoning in rural Sri Lanka. METHODS Data were collected on all acute poisoning cases admitted to 34 primary and 1 referral hospital in Anuradhapura district from September 2008 to January 2010. Three admission data sets were compared with the "true" incidence of acute poisoning to determine the s...

BACKGROUND In Japan, all citizens are covered by the national insurance system in which universal free access to healthcare services is promised to everybody. There are no general physicians or gatekeepers in the Japanese healthcare system. METHODS We studied the pattern of referral of inpatients from secondary care hospitals to a tertiary care university hospital and the reverse referral und...

The characteristics of patients with non-fatal road traffic injuries who received care from non-referral hospitals are described; an assessment of the difference between the characteristics of patients who received care at a referral hospital and those of patients who were treated at non-referral hospitals is made. A retrospective study, conducted in Chon Buri Province, Thailand, reviewed infor...

BACKGROUND Emergency admissions to hospital at night and weekends are distressing for patients and disruptive for hospitals. Many of these admissions result from referrals from GP out-of-hours (OOH) providers. AIM To compare rates of referral to hospital for doctors working OOH before and after the new general medical services contract was introduced in Bristol in 2005; to explore the attitud...

Background: Adverse Events (AEs) due to failure in healthcare procedures are common. These procedures are often evaluated independently. The objectives of this study are to investigate the nature of the failures in healthcare procedures of the surgical patients, assessing the frequency of these failures and preventability, and exploring their consequences, underlying causes, and prevention stra...