Public health reports
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Public health reports · Sep 1975
Allocation of resources for ambulatory care -a staffing model for outpatient clinics.
The enormous commitment of resources to ambulatory health care services requires that flexible and easily implementable management techniques be developed to improve the allocation of health manpower and funds. This article develops a feasible model for staffing outpatient clinics and thereby potentially provides an important analytical tool for allocating and monitoring the utilization of the most critical and expensive of ambulatory care resources-professional and nonprofessional clinic personnel. ⋯ The key decision varables that require input from administrators and medical personnel include standards for physician-patient contact time, a desired ratio of staff time actually spent treating patients to total paid staff time, and the desired mix of various staff categories to achieve program objectives. Specific benefits of using the model include determining staffing for new, expanded, or existing outpatient clinics, determining budget requirements for such staffing needs, and providing quantitative productivity and utilization objectives and measurements.
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A detailed analysis of all the reported dog bites that occurred over a 2-year period in St. Louis, Mo., provided new insight not only into the severity of the problem, but also the environmental context for injury. Dog bite is a major medical problem that affects at least 1 of every 222 people and specifically 1 of every 83 children, 5 to 9 years old. ⋯ More than 85 percent of all the biting dogs had owners. These results indicate that society's views of dog bite injury, which tend to minimize the problem and find fault with the victim, must be re-evaluated. It is time to place less emphasis on the victim and even the animal and review thae public health implications of dog ownership