The tacit values of quality include tapping the creative potential of people, valuing their ideas equally, and viewing work as process--a series of steps that combine people, resources, and activities to produce a certain outcome. Mediation is a process that brings to the surface the creative thinking of people when ...

The changing healthcare environment is placing new demands on today's professionals to demonstrate evidence of their continued competence to practice. Obtaining relicensure may soon require the use of a professional portfolio. In many instances, portfolios are already necessary for recertification by some specialty organizations. The author describes a course that ...

Basic life support (BLS) is a core skill in which all healthcare professionals should be proficient. It is logical to provide BLS training during undergraduate years ensuring basic competence in all graduating healthcare students. Previous surveys of medical and dental schools have highlighted deficiencies in BLS training. This survey sought ...

This review examines how a "bottom-up" model of a civilian technology program works by recounting the story of the "genesis" of the Information Infrastructure for Healthcare (IIH) focused program of the Advanced Technology Program. The IIH program began with an exchange of ideas among members of the private and public ...

Just when hospitals and healthcare systems need highly qualified leadership the most--considering all the management challenges the industry continues to face--there seems to be a growing shortage of skilled executives. A handful of industry executives are working with provider organizations and the nation's graduate programs in healthcare administration to develop ...

Health information management systems have had a tremendous impact on the delivery of healthcare. The implementation of an integrated, concurrent trauma registry and performance improvement system has had a remarkable impact on the University of Pennsylvania's trauma program. Having both the registry and performance improvement programs concurrent and integrated has ...

This paper reviews the various organizations in the United States that perform accreditation and establish standards for healthcare delivery. These agencies include the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), the American Medical Accreditation Program (AMAP), the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission/Utilization Review ...

In recent years, healthcare CFOs have seen their role expand significantly beyond traditional financial duties. A series of trended surveys on CFO roles and responsibilities reveals that today's healthcare CFO requires a broad new range of traits and skills in the areas of leadership, operations, and healthcare strategy. CFOs regard ...

Supporting the "integration" of an integrated delivery system is an exceptionally complex and difficult challenge. Lack of organizational clarity about integration strategies and value, political challenges in effecting integration, the idiosyncratic and evolutionary nature of integration, and the technical challenges of integrating heterogeneous technologies all contribute to the scale of ...

No longer focused on mere automation of manual processes, healthcare technology is poised to transform practice. Healthcare information systems can extend and enhance the memory; streamline administrative processes; provide access to information where, when, and how it is needed; and manage the cost of care while protecting and improving clinical ...

The Federal government's current policy toward healthcare providers that voluntarily disclose improprieties has been ineffective because it offers no guarantee of immunity from prosecution. To be successful, a self-disclosure program must offer real incentives to providers to come forward. The government's self-disclosure programs with respect to tax, environmental, and antitrust ...

Disease management is a holistic, patient-focused approach to the treatment of disease across the spectrum of healthcare delivery. In its current form, disease management was created in response to the societal and economic burden that chronic illness contributes. There has recently been rapid growth in the development of disease management ...

It's a changing of the guard. In the past 18 months, some of the nation's best-known and longest-serving healthcare chief executives have relinquished the day-to-day management of their organizations. And more CEOs have announced their intention to leave this year or next. This is a generation that came of age ...

Communication plays a vital role in an increasingly complex healthcare environment. Quality patient outcomes and successful collaboration depend upon the healthcare provider's ability to communicate needs. A self-directed work team at a large southeastern hospital used a quality improvement process to design a new series of workshops to enhance staff ...

Healthcare organizations have created corporate compliance programs in an effort to adhere to Federal government recommendations, minimize the risk of wrongful behavior, and possibly reduce fines that may result from a government investigation. Compliance programs may have undetected weaknesses. Corporate compliance officers, executives, and board members need to be certain ...

OBJECTIVES: Mediation training can prepare healthcare professionals to manage conflict effectively in today's changing healthcare system. The primary purpose of the study was to measure the perceived comfort level of healthcare professionals with conflict before and after mediation training and to determine the extent to which mediation principles were applied ...

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' ORYX program integrates performance measurement into the accreditation process. Your hospital already should have chosen six measures to report for the ORYX program, and those measures may affect the ED. Surveyors will want to see comparison charts, so your ED can be ...

PROBLEM: Salinas Valley wanted to improve its reporting procedures to payors for reimbursement. Delays in reporting referred outpatients and inpatients can significantly impact receipt of reimbursements from payors. SOLUTION: Salinas Valley developed a program of concurrent coding in which every procedure is assigned a reimbursement code that is automatically registered ...

At present many healthcare organizations are being pressed by national governments or client groups to develop and implement quality systems. Unfortunately, not much is known about the development and implementation of these systems in healthcare organizations. There still are definition questions to be answered and it is not clear in ...

The EPR Observatory has studied 13 local Danish electronic patient record (EPR) projects through 2 years. The focus has been on expectations and experiences in relation to organisational changes. The main conclusions are that the healthcare professionals, working with the development, implementation and/or use of EPR, are in a very ...

The Life-long Learning concept is one which is appropriate for those who have (or create) the opportunities to develop their competencies once they are in an operational role. All models of healthcare delivery and management are VOLATILE and therefore the way of addressing new competencies cannot be prescriptive or stand ...

In this contribution the traditional approach to education is presented and compared with the problem-based approach. Trends in the healthcare system indicate that education in health informatics and training in ICT becomes mandatory for students and healthcare professionals. These trends are presented. In addition the role of ICT in education ...

This paper describes the theory, method and recent results of a study developing methods for assessment of change readiness. The empirical focus is on development and implementation of clinical IT systems in the Danish healthcare sector. To assess change readiness, a questionnaire has been developed. The questionnaire has been tested ...

This paper will describe the purpose, process and value of an international Practice Development Program by which clinical units can choose to be credentialed. It will describe how the fourteen criteria that a Unit is credentialed against takes them along a journey of practice, personal and professional development that equips ...

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 contained sweeping changes to Medicare that directly affect healthcare professionals in all clinical settings. If clinicians are to be successful in today's healthcare marketplace, they must have a working knowledge of these changes and the impact they have on their employers and patients. Economic ...

A Town Meeting about the Performance Measurement Coordinating Council (PMCC) was held at the NAHQ Annual Educational Conference in September in Atlanta. Established in 1998, the PMCC is a collaboration of three national accrediting bodies--the American Medical Accreditation Program (AMAP), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and ...

Economic guidelines recommend methods that should be employed in conducting economic evaluations of healthcare programs. The nature of the efficiency or equity goal underpinning economic guidelines is unclear. What is also unclear is how the methods recommended in the guidelines are linked to the underlying efficiency or equity goal being ...

For almost 2 decades, the European nations have witnessed a continuous cycle of healthcare reform policies. Although each of these efforts to craft new public policy has been tailored to fit the specific political, social and cultural circumstances of each country, there are many striking similarities among these attempts to ...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the total costs of infertility coverage, determine the proportion of healthcare costs related to infertility, compare infertility costs to those of other diseases, and calculate a per member per month cost of an infertility benefit. DESIGN: Historical prospective analysis. SETTING: A university-based, self-insured, fee-for-service healthcare plan. PATIENT(S): ...

This article reviews risk factors for work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the rubber and plastics industries, as well as cost-effective methods of abatement. Return-to-work caveats also are discussed. Of interest to healthcare providers and other members of ergonomics teams, Dr. Perez presents the tools needed to implement effective ergonomics programs.

A 24-question survey on varicella-zoster screening programs and control measures for varicella-zoster infections was sent to 170 Canadian healthcare facilities. The results indicated that 60% of Canadian healthcare facilities have well-established preemployment varicella-zoster screening programs for healthcare workers. Overall, 30% of healthcare facilities impose work restrictions for susceptible healthcare workers, ...

Violence in the workplace is making headlines across the United States. Healthcare workers are not immune to violent encounters. Many healthcare workers will experience workplace violence at least once during their professional careers. Nurses are in a unique position to develop and provide assistance to implement prevention programs that can ...

A healthcare manufacturer seeking to ensure that dollars invested in training return value in performance improvements will want to consider each of these elements and develop a written training plan. Companies who have created a training plan to meet their business objectives are already reaping benefits of reduced turnover and ...

A single radiology department serves the three separate organizations that comprise Emory Healthcare in Atlanta--three separate hospitals, the Emory Clinic and the Emory University School of Medicine. In 1996, the chairman of Emory Healthcare issued a mandate to the radiology department to decrease its report turnaround time, provide better service ...

One of the challenges facing staff development educators today is addressing the needs of a new healthcare team with widely differing education and experience. We developed a novel approach--the Party Planner--to teach a diverse healthcare team about a rather complicated practice model. The Party Planner addresses issues that are central ...

Healthcare organizations purchase new hardware and software to enable them to support changing business needs and improve operating efficiencies. The procurement process, rather than the implementation of hardware and software, sets the stage for success. Eight key steps in the procurement process are to understand the need, capitalize the project, ...

Physicians, patients, and payers use some interventions that do not work, while they ignore others that have a scientific basis for efficacy. As a society, Americans are unwilling to address collectively healthcare issues, as witnessed by legislative inaction on reform. They have chosen instead to leave such matters up to ...

Goals are individualized and specific. Outcome criteria are expected end results based on standards of practice for a specific home care problem (i.e., disease process, etc.). Goals take into account all the factors of the individual, including the outcome criteria, whereas outcome criteria take into account only clinician knowledge of ...

This article describes the results of our initial accreditation survey by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Strengths, as well as supplemental recommendations in our clinic and laboratory programs, were identified during the accreditation survey. Mechanisms for addressing the supplemental recommendations are described in this report. ...

Healthcare workers' and students' exposures to blood-borne pathogens during a 1-year period (1997) at a large university academic medical center were analyzed. The university health manages the Blood-Borne Pathogen Post-Exposure Control Program at the university and treats all reported exposures of students, faculty, and staff. Comparative exposure rates for all ...

The federal government continues to expand its initiatives to uncover healthcare fraud, waste, and abuse. It is therefore more important than ever that healthcare organizations have an effective compliance program in place. The organization should have a compliance officer with adequate authority and staff to carry out the compliance program's ...

Preparing a large hospital for a Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) survey is always a challenging endeavor. Because staff members have diverse learning needs it is important that staff be educated in the JCAHO standards. In this article, the author describes the educational strategies used to prepare ...

Healthcare financial managers responsible for the investments of their healthcare organizations should identify the extent of their investment programs' exposure to year-2000-related problems. A letter should be sent to investment-related vendors requesting specific information and assurances regarding the vendors' efforts to contain or eliminate the year 2000 problem. An internal ...

The International Course in Healthcare Management is predicated on the belief that comparative benefits can most effectively be 'taught' by enabling students to work directly with colleagues in other countries, sharing views, discussing differences, and checking understandings on how healthcare is structured and managed in different countries. The course focuses ...

Since its inception, the Internet has created many new opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge between individuals. One of the areas most affected by these changes has been healthcare, both in terms of service provision and in the arena of medical education. Other healthcare professionals have described the educational resources ...

Healthcare security professionals are facing new challenges as their responsibilities in a fast-changing environment are increasing. The level of healthcare professionalism, the author says, can be improved through the use of risk assessments, strategic planning and design, security safeguards, and security program measurement. In this article, he discusses the importance ...

There is no definitive blueprint for the healthcare organization involved in strategic learning. However, what distinguishes strategic learning institutions is their acknowledgment that they must discover their own paths and solutions rather than blindly follow a detailed strategic mandate from administration. Answers to their most critical implementation and adaptive questions ...

This paper concerns users' views on computerised resources. The focus concerns a software tool that could be used to allow safety conscious user manipulation of the combination of these computerised resources. It is of concern to the authors that computerised resources used in healthcare should reflect users' working practices rather ...

All healthcare facilities--not just urban ones--need to train their staff and be equipped to handle gangs and gang-related crime and violence, says the author. This article discusses the various aspects of the ongoing training program in gang awareness for Durham Regional Hospital's Security Department--including types of gangs, their mindsets and ...

Experience with Information Systems (IS) staff, interactions with healthcare senior management, and discussions with faculty and students have led us to the conclusions that few healthcare organizations have conceptualized and articulated an optimal organizational role for IS (particularly for IS leadership). In this paper we will describe the multi-polar, often ...