Background. Statins may have anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects that could reduce the risk of mortality from influenza virus infections.Methods. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infections Program conducts active surveillance for persons hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed influenza in 59 counties in 10 states. We analyzed data for hospitalized adults during the ...

Adverse drug events are important preventable causes of hospitalization in older adults. However, nationally representative data on adverse drug events that result in hospitalization in this population have been limited. We used adverse-event data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance project (2007 through 2009) to ...

BackgroundPopulation-based studies on physical therapy use in acute care are lacking.ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to examine population-based, hospital discharge data from North Carolina to describe the demographic and diagnostic characteristics of individuals who receive physical therapy and, for common diagnostic subgroups, to identify factors associated with the receipt ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Statins reduce infarct size in animal models of stroke and have been hypothesized to improve clinical outcomes after ischemic stroke. We examined the relationship between statin use before and during stroke hospitalization and poststroke survival. METHODS: We analyzed records from 12 689 patients admitted with ischemic stroke ...

BACKGROUND:The incidence of hospitalized rhabdomyolysis is not well characterized among patients taking statin-fibrate combination therapies.OBJECTIVE:To estimate and compare the rates of hospitalized rhabdomyolysis during periods of exposure to different statins and fibrates.METHODS:We retrospectively identified a cohort of patients who initiated a statin or fibrate between January 1, 1998, and December ...

Statins are a well-known primary and secondary prevention drug for cardiovascular disease and NICE guidelines have been issued to identify key indicators for their use. An audit looking into statin prescribing for medical inpatients was carried out in two geographically distinct London hospitals. A prospective inpatient audit of medical prescription ...

This article examines the impact of direct-to-physician, direct-to-consumer, and other marketing activities by pharmaceutical companies on a mature drug category which is in the later stage of its life cycle and in which generics have accrued a significant market share. The main objective of this article is to quantitatively estimate ...

Primary objective: To determine (i) the effectiveness of a goal-directed, environment-focused occupational therapy intervention and (ii) to compare rehabilitation gains across a day hospital (outpatient) setting and home setting. Research design: Repeated measures cross-over design with pre-post test measures and a baseline control period, random allocation to a treatment setting ...

Electronic software packages to support patient tracking and disposition decision making in emergency departments (EDs) are being considered for implementation in many hospitals. We compared extent of use, information accuracy, and functions of manual and electronic patient status boards at 2 EDs where both were continuously in use. Ethnographic observations ...

Independent consultant to the healthcare sector Dr Melvyn Langford says a "fundamental flaw" in the way the long-established NHS "5 x 5" criticality grid used to assess the urgency of backlog maintenance has been interpreted could be giving NHS estates and facilities personnel, and in turn Trust boards, a distorted ...

This paper describes the efficiency of Dutch hospitals using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method with bootstrapping. In particular, the analysis focuses on accounting for cost inefficiency measures on the part of hospital corporate governance. We use bootstrap techniques, as introduced by Simar and Wilson (J. Econom. 136(1):31-64, 2007), in ...

In 1884, seven deaconesses from Iserlohn, Germany, came to the Philadelphia German Hospital to take over nursing care and hospital administration. This article deals with the preparation and implementation of deaconess rule at the German Hospital and conflicts during the tenure of the first two Sisters Superior, Marie Krueger (1826-1887) ...

Small rural hospitals, categorized as critical access hospitals (CAHs), are essential to the provision of health care in rural areas of the United States. Critical access hospitals, however, are faced with numerous challenges to their survival that are unique to their role as a rural health care provider. One of ...

OBJECTIVES: A historical review of the editorial board and the founding editor of WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation was conducted to examine the understanding of the editorship and contributions of this team to the knowledge in WORK. PARTICIPANTS: The team of four authors worked together to identify ...

Being chosen for the Board of Governors of The Ottawa Hospital is as tough as being chosen for the board of a major bank. The hospital knows that a high-performing board can add immense value.

In a number of rural areas, one executive leads two, or even three, hospitals. They have to juggle staffs, boards of trustees and where to spend their time.

Report of a 42-year-old woman who had an acute severe headache, sickness, and a short-term seizure. After hospitalization, a computed tomography (CT) study was done and reported as normal. The discharge home followed after symptomatic treatment for 5 days. 10 days after the first acute onset appeared a second event ...

Hospital board members have little or no training on quality or safety issues and a spotty record of oversight in those areas, a new study published by Health Affairs has found. Many are convinced that boards have a big role to play in improving quality and safety, and that by ...

Hospitals' boards may influence the quality of care that hospitals provide, but their engagement in quality-related issues is largely unknown. We surveyed a nationally representative sample of board chairs of 1,000 U.S. hospitals to understand their expertise, perspectives, and activities in clinical quality. We found that fewer than half of ...

OBJECTIVES: The objective was to estimate the emergency medicine (EM) board-certified emergency physician (EP) workforce supply and demand by U.S. state. METHODS: The 2005 National Emergency Department Inventories-USA provided annual visit volumes for U.S. emergency departments (EDs). We estimated full-time equivalent (FTE) EP demand at each ED by dividing the ...

Although hospitals vary in terms of their governance structures, little research has focused on the effectiveness of these governance mechanisms through the study of executive contracting. Using a sample of 80 non-for-profit private hospitals in the Netherlands, I investigate whether differences in governance structures of hospitals are informative for explaining ...

This study examined hospital governance in British Columbia. Considered to be one of the most important issues facing the health care industry today, hospital governance is nevertheless an ill-defined and poorly understood concept. Foundational and exploratory in nature, the study’s primary objectives were: a) to define hospital governance within the ...

Specialty board certification, though voluntary, has become an indispensable designation for many osteopathic physicians. The authors report rates of osteopathic specialty board certification and recertification. On the recommendation of the Bureau of Osteopathic Specialists--and as a result of recent action by the American Osteopathic Association Board of Trustees--a new osteopathic ...

Increased stake of boards in the leadership of the hospitals makes them play a significant role in the financial health of their institutions. Understanding of the correct approach to successfully fulfill this purpose is critical for preparing their organizations for positioning adequately in the health care market. Governmental agencies and ...

BACKGROUND: Nonprofit hospital boards are under increasing pressure to improve financial, clinical, and charitable and community benefit performance. Most research on board effectiveness focuses on variables measuring board structure and attributes associated with competing ideal models of board roles. However, the results do not provide clear evidence that one role ...

The article contains both a survey of writings on homosexuality in military organizations since the early 1970s, and a reexamination of the homoerotic involvements on the Royal Navy's HMS Africaine from 1811 to 1815. The Africaine affair, first studied by Arthur N. Gilbert in 1974, involved a sexually active coterie ...

Wikipedia is an online, free access, volunteer-contributed encyclopedia. This article focuses on the Wikipedians' (Wikipedia users) personality characteristics, studying Wikipedians' conceptions of Real-Me and BFI dimensions. To survey these aspects, we posted links to two online web questionnaires; one was targeted at Wikipedians and the second to non-Wikipedia users. One ...

Cardiologists, radiologists, and nuclear medicine physicians receive training and may be allowed to perform cardiovascular imaging by using echocardiography, nuclear cardiology, or cardiovascular computed tomography. Given the tremendous variability in training and expertise, physician certification in each of these areas has been developed as a measure of providing quality studies ...

Richard de Filippi says it won't be easy and it won't happen quickly, but with the help and collaborative leadership of key partners--including the hospital trustee community--health care reform will happen. The new chair-elect of the American Hospital Association, a trustee himself and a former hospital board chairman, is very ...

PURPOSE: To assess the incremental value of the left-side-down decubitus view in radiographic evaluation of ileocolic intussusception. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The institutional review board approved this retrospective investigation with waiver of informed consent. Between February 24, 2002, and January 25, 2007, 304 studies (300 patients; mean age, 1.3 years; range, ...

To get physicians on board with a clinical documentation program: Explain what the government is trying to accomplish with changes to the prospective payment system; Connect codes and quality report cards; Enlist a physician champion; Conduct an MS-DRG financial impact study and share the results with physicians; Establish a clinical ...

In 1933, for the second time in the history of the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled (R & C), a general surgeon, Eugene Hillhouse Pool, MD, was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief by the Board of Managers of the New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled. R & ...

OBJECTIVES: The selection of a portable biomedical device (PBD) is a key issue regarding telecare service design. The objective of this study is to investigate the accuracy parameters of a PBD under different settings and levels. METHODS AND MATERIALS: By using a commercial PBD, trials were performed in a referral ...

Today's healthcare CFO has become a strategic driver of his or her organization. A key focus for today's CFO is on treasury and debt management, and he or she is likely to have much greater interaction with the hospital board than CFOs did in the past. Among the factors that ...

Recent investigations into the activities of nonprofit hospitals have pointed to weak or lax governance on the part of some of these organizations. As a result of these events, various federal and state initiatives are now either under way or under discussion to strengthen the governance of hospitals and other ...

OBJECTIVE: To develop a taxonomy of governing board roles in U.S. hospitals. DATA SOURCES: 2005 AHA Hospital Governance Survey, 2004 AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals, and Area Resource File. STUDY DESIGN: A governing board taxonomy was developed using cluster analysis. Results were validated and reviewed by industry experts. Differences in ...

The efforts of the Metropolitan Asylums Board in Victorian London to isolate cases of smallpox in hospitals, and so limit its spread, set off a controversy about , i.e. alleged escapes of the disease into the neighbourhood. When, in 1870, the Board began to gather cases of smallpox into its ...

Specialty board certification, though voluntary, has become an indispensable designation for many osteopathic physicians. The authors report rates of osteopathic specialty board certification and recertification for osteopathic physicians. Earlier this year, at the recommendation of the Bureau of Osteopathic Specialists, the American Osteopathic Association Board of Trustees approved the use ...

Effective hospital governance depends on proactive board leadership to minimize risk. To survey hospital board chairs about governance practices, particularly with respect to approval processes for oversight of management preparedness for unforeseen emergencies. A 2004 survey of hospital managers initially suggested greater board leadership in risk management as a desired ...

BACKGROUND: Regular recertification is mandatory to maintain board certification status in all specialties. However, the evidence that physicians' performance decreases with time since initial certification is limited. We therefore carried out a study to determine whether the frequency of antihypertensive treatment intensification for diabetic patients changes with time since their ...

In their paper, Hurley et al. document the development of strategies used by workers' compensation boards (WCBs) to provide enhanced access and medical care to injured workers. They discuss the implications of these strategies for physicians, patients, government and the provincial public insurance plans. My comments on their paper focus ...

The eminent surgeon Sir William Macewen (1848-1924), kept a series of Private Journals (PJs) of cases he encountered on the surgical wards of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI). From 1881 photographs featured in the PJs, soon afterwards Macewen began to duplicate images and mount them on boards, which formed the ...

This article descriptively assesses how physicians are disciplined by state medical boards throughout the United States, drawing on a nationwide database of sanctions delivered during the period 1994-2002. We identify the frequency and severity of disciplinary actions, the offenses leading to actions, and the degree to which sanctioned physicians are ...

Boarding of admitted patients in the Emergency Department (ED), rather than in inpatient care areas, is widespread. We surveyed boarded patients, patients without a disposition, and visitors at a county hospital ED serving a mixed urban and rural population. Subjects were asked "If you needed to be admitted to the ...

BACKGROUND: The effect of any legislation depends on its implementation. Limited studies indicate that tobacco companies may tend to use such provision for surrogate advertising. The point of sale advertisement provision has been placed in the Indian Tobacco Control legislation. The study was undertaken to assess the Indian scenario in ...

In the last decade there has been an increase in empirical research on coaches of elite able-bodied athletes, while coaches of athletes with a disability have generally been overlooked. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to address this oversight by examining the career evolution and knowledge of these ...

This article discusses the educational value of the "board round", a clinical teaching forum introduced at Hope Hospital, Manchester, UK. At midday on weekdays all available consultants and middle grade doctors, and any other staff who can attend, meet to discuss a case selected from the patients currently in the ...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of physicians who self or otherwise declare themselves to be pediatricians but who have never achieved board certification. STUDY DESIGN: We compared a roster from the state licensure file of eight geographically diverse states containing those designated as pediatricians ...

Those joining hospital boards of trustees in New Jersey will soon have to go to school, according to a new law aimed at boosting their financial and governance savvy. And it could start a trend, as more and more hospitals come under greater scrutiny. "I think trustee leadership is crucial ...

Hospital governance refers to the complex of checks and balances that determine how decisions are made within the top structures of hospitals. This article explores the essentials of the concept by analysing the root notion of governance and comparing it with applications in other sectors. Recent developments that put pressure ...