International journal of health care quality assurance
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Int J Health Care Qual Assur · Jan 2009
Historical ArticleFrank Gilbreth and health care delivery method study driven learning.
The purpose of this article is to look at method study, as devised by the Gilbreths at the beginning of the twentieth century, which found early application in hospital quality assurance and surgical "best practice". It has since become a core activity in all modern methods, as applied to healthcare delivery improvement programmes. ⋯ The article provides a proven method for exploiting Gilbreths' outputs and their many successors in enabling more productive evidence-based healthcare delivery as summarised in the "learn-do-learn-do" feedback loop in the Gilbreth Knowledge Flywheel.
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Int J Health Care Qual Assur · Jan 2008
Consensus-based policy recommendations for geriatric emergency care.
The purpose of this paper is to establish policy recommendations to address service and care delivery challenges facing hospital emergency departments (EDs) responding to the needs of increasing numbers of older adults. ⋯ The paper describes the process and results of a consensus development activity for ED care and services of older adults.
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Int J Health Care Qual Assur · Jan 2007
Promoting safety: longer-term responses of three health professional groups to a safety improvement programme.
Patient safety has been addressed since 2002 in the health system of New South Wales, Australia via a Safety Improvement Programme (SIP), which took a system-wide approach. The programme involved two-day courses to educate healthcare professionals to monitor and report incidents and analyse adverse events by conducting root cause analysis (RCA). This paper aims to predict that all professions would favour SIP but that their work and educational histories would result in doctors holding the least and nurses the most positive attitudes. Alternative hypotheses were that doctors' relative power and other professions' team-working skills would advantage the respective groups when conducting RCAs. ⋯ Few longer-term SIPs' assessments have been realised and the differences between professional groups have not been well quantified. As a result of this paper, benefits of and barriers to conducting RCAs are now more clearly understood.
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Int J Health Care Qual Assur · Jan 1996
A priority queuing model to reduce waiting times in emergency care.
Investigates the increased waiting time costs imposed on society due to inappropriate use of the emergency department by patients, seeking non-emergency or primary care. Proposes a simple economic model to illustrate the effect of this misuse at a public or not-for-profit hospital. Provides evidence that non-emergency patients contribute to lengthy delays in the ER for all classes of patients. Proposes a priority queuing model to reduce average waiting times.
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Hospitals provide the same type of service, but they do not all provide the same quality of service. No one knows this better than patients. Reports the results of a market research exercise initiated to ascertain the different factors which patients of health care identify as being necessary to provide error-free service quality in the NHS hospitals. ⋯ This technique compares expectations with perceptions of service received across five broad dimensions of service quality, namely: tangibility; reliability; responsiveness; assurance; and empathy. This analysis covered 174 patients who had completed the SERVQUAL questionnaire, including patients who had had treatment in surgical, orthopaedic, spinal injury, medicinal, dental and other specialties in the West Midlands region. Recorded the average weighted NHS service quality score overall for the five dimensions as significantly negative.