Clinical performance and quality health care
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Clin Perform Qual Health Care · Apr 1997
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialThe Office of the Future Project: the integration of new technology into office practice. Academic detailing through the super highway. Quebec Research Group on Medication Use in the Elderly.
Effective management of drug therapy in the elderly is a challenge for primary-care physicians. There are 20,400 drugs approved for marketing in Canada. Most elderly patients will fill 33 prescriptions per year and take 5 different medications. ⋯ Information on all prescriptions received by the physicians' elderly patients is downloaded weekly from the provincial prescription claims database, so that the primary physician is able to coordinate and manage all drugs prescribed to their patients by all physicians. The effectiveness of this intervention is being evaluated in a randomized controlled trial of 110 physicians and approximately 16,000 elderly patients in Montreal. We will test whether the intervention reduces the rate of inappropriate prescribing, as well as the rate of drug-related injuries and hospitalizations among patients treated by physicians in the experimental group.
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Clin Perform Qual Health Care · Jul 1996
Report of a continuous quality improvement program in a tertiary-care medical center.
Changes in the health system in Israel have led to an increasingly competitive environment, decentralization, and economic constraints. We evaluated the use of a continuous quality improvement (CQI) program. ⋯ Several factors were identified as essential to the success of the program, including staff cooperation and commitment. We conclude that the CQI program was a useful tool to help our tertiary-care medical center adjust to changes in the Israeli healthcare system. It also served as a valid vehicle for maintaining and furthering optimal quality of care.
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Clin Perform Qual Health Care · Jul 1996
Multidisciplinary patient management by means of a high social risk screening tool.
The long-term goal in this study was for the Memorial Hospital of Salem County, Inc (MHSC), to create a seamless system of continuity of care for patients. This continuity of care begins before patients require acute admission through the hospital course and extends beyond discharge and into the post-hospital setting or alternate care situation. ⋯ Critical to the success of this overall effort was not designing the new tool, but integrating the tool into a reengineered multidisciplinary patient management process.