Introduction to Health Care Quality explores the issues of quality management in today's health care environment, and provides clear guidance on new and perennial challenges in the field. The idea of 'quality' is examined in the context of a variety of health care situations, with practical emphasis on assessment, monitoring, analysis, and improvement. Students will learn how to utilize statistical tools, patient data, and more to understand new models of reimbursement, including pay for performance and value-based purchasing. They will also learn how to learn how to incorporate technology into everyday practice. Each chapter centers on an essential concept, but builds upon previous chapters to reinforce the material and equip students with a deeper understanding of the modern health care industry. Real-world situations are highlighted to show the intersection of theory and application, while cutting-edge methodologies and models prepare students for today's data-driven health care environment. Health care quality is defined and assessed according to setting, with factors such as standards, laws, regulations, accreditation, and consumerism impacting measurement and analysis in tremendous ways. This book provides an overview of this complex field, with insightful discussion and expert practical guidance. Health care today is worlds away from any other point in history. As the field grows ever more complex, quality management becomes increasingly critical for ensuring optimal patient care. Introduction to Health Care Quality helps students and professionals make sense of the issues, and provide top-notch service in today's rapidly changing health care environment.

The past decade has witnessed a significant increase in the construction of health as a security issue by national governments and multilateral organizations. This book provides the first critical, feminist analysis of the flesh-and-blood impacts of the securitization of health on different bodies, while broadening the scope of what we understand as global health security. It looks at how feminist perspectives on health and security can lead to different questions about health and in/security, problematizing some of the 'common sense' assumptions that underlie much of the discourse in this area. It considers the norms, ideologies, and vested interests that frame specific 'threats' to health and policy responses, while exposing how the current governance of the global economy shapes new threats to health. Some chapters focus on conflict, war and complex emergencies, while others move from a 'high political' focus to the domain of subtler and often insidious structural violence, illuminating the impacts of hegemonic masculinities and the neoliberal governance of the global economy on health and life chances. Highlighting the critical intersections across health, gender and security, this book is an important contribution to scholarship on health and security, global health, public health and gender studies.

With more people living longer lives, there is increased importance in the health care industry on improving services for the elderly. This comprehensive book gives an expert overview of the topics and challenges, along with imperative ethical and legal frameworks. The book also details existing programs and benefits in relation to a realistic portrayal of population needs. Other important issues are covered such as long-term palliative care and hospice, other vulnerable populations, elder abuse, public-private collaboration, evidence-based policy-making, and much more.

Alessandra Lemma - Winner of the Levy-Goldfarb Award for Child Psychoanalysis

The contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis is being increasingly questioned; Off the Couch challenges this view, demonstrating that psychoanalytic thinking and its applications are both innovative and relevant, in particular to the management and treatment of more disturbed and difficult to engage patient groups. Chapters address:

• clinical applications in diverse settings across the age range
• the relevance of psychoanalytic thinking to the practice of CBT, psychosomatics and general psychiatry
• the contribution of psychoanalytic thinking to mental health policy and the politics of conflict and mediation.

This book suggests that psychoanalysis has a vital position within the public health sector and discusses how it can be better utilised in the treatment of a range of mental health problems. It also highlights the role of empirical research in providing a robust evidence base.

Off the Couch will be essential reading for those practicing in the field of mental health and will also be useful for anyone involved in the development of mental health and public policies. It will ensure that practitioners and supervisors have a clear insight into how psychoanalysis can be applied in general healthcare.

Foreseeing and planning for all of the possibilities and pitfalls involved in bringing a biotechnology innovation from inception to widespread therapeutic use takes strong managerial skills and a solid grounding in biopharmaceutical research and development procedures. Unfortunately there has been a dearth of resources for this aspect of the field. Until now. Focusing on the management of healthcare-related biotech, from conception through the product's regulatory approval and entire life cycle, Healthcare Biotechnology: A Practical Guide provides a practical, applicable resource to assist all health-care related biotech professionals in their day-to-day activities from the lab to the boardroom. Divided into six sections, the book begins with current systems and recent progress and controversy, major players and products, and a comparison with the pharmaceutical industry. It covers intellectual property protection and management, the innovation cycle, patent application, commercialization, and competition. Coverage includes funding, partnering, cash-intensive activities, financing alternatives, and the complexities of alliance implementation and management. It highlights research, development, and biomanufacturing; and examines clinical trial design and regulations; "fast-track" approvals; and patient recruitment as well as production platforms and processes, costs, strategies, and timelines. It investigates marketing including planning, promotion, pricing, supply chain management, and bio-brand lifecycle management. It concludes with tips on running the business, offering diverse biobusiness models and reasonable expectations from inception through maturity and decline. An indispensible guide, this book offers more than 40 figures, 220 tables, and 180 references as well as a list of abbreviations and a business plan outline. Each chapter contains 10 questions to reinforce the material covered and 10 exercises

This pioneering work addresses a key issue that confronts all industrialised nations: How do we organise healthcare services in accordance with fundamental human rights, whilst competing with scientific and technological advances, powerful commercial interests and widespread public ignorance? "The Nature of Health" presents a coherent, affordable and logical way to build a healthcare system. It argues against a health system fixated on the pursuit of longevity and suggests an alternative where the ability of an individual to function in worthwhile relationships is a better, more human goal. By reviewing the etymology, sociology and anthropology of health, this controversial guide examines the meaning of health, and proves how a community-centred healthcare system improves local economy, creates social capital and is affordable, rational, personal, and just. "This is badly needed nourishment for a medical system glutted on technology, individualism, profit and the pursuit of longevity. Read and be fed." - Christopher Koller, Health Insurance Commissioner, The State of Rhode Island, USA. "Unique. Surprising. A real eye-opener. Just about everyone who doesn't have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo will agree that U.S. healthcare is badly broken. [This book] is making it possible for us to refocus from how to provide healthcare to how to achieve health. Their description of health as successful functioning in community, rather than as a measure of longevity is a definition that can make a reader feel healthier as they take gradually appreciate the power of the concept. On this foundation, it is not as hard as one might think to outline a healthcare system that is equitable, affordable and achievable." - Alexander Blount EdD, Professor of Family Medicine, University of Massacusetts Medical Center.

With rapid economic progress and increasing life expectancy in East Asian societies, more attention is being paid by their governments, the media and the academy to mental illness and dementia. While clinical research on mental illness and dementia in Chinese societies acknowledges the importance of culture in shaping people's experiences of these illnesses, how Chinese culture shapes people's understandings of and responses to mental illness and dementia has yet to be interrogated to any depth. Mental Illness, Dementia and Family in China breaks new ground in exploring how Chinese culture, namely, the understandings, norms, values and scripts that people acquire through being members of a Chinese community, shapes contemporary stories of mental illness, dementia and family care-giving. This book is innovative in examining and comparing stories which have been drawn from both real life ('life stories'), as well as from film and television productions ('filmic stories'). These two forms effectively complement each other, with life stories generally presenting an 'insider's' account and filmic stories generally presenting an 'outsider's' account. What remains unvoiced in one kind of story may be voiced in the other kind. Drawing on the perspectives and analytic approaches of narrative analysis and cultural studies, Guy Ramsay uncovers culturally-shaped continuities and departures in representations of time, identity and cause of illness as well as in the language employed in contemporary stories of mental illness, dementia and family care-giving in China. This book will be invaluable to students and scholars working on Chinese cultural studies and Asian social policy, as well as those interested in psychiatry, mental health and disability studies more broadly.

When you can't breathe, nothing else matters. If you are one of the 15 million Americans diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), you know what it's like to struggle to breathe. You know what it's like to sacrifice your favourite activities to a chronic illness that changes everything from your work life to how you take your meals. But there is help,and hope. Respiratory Therapist Dawn Lesley Fielding shares the program she has used in her own practice,with an astonishing 100% success rate,offering techniques and tools to make breathing easier and improve your overall health. This practical, accessible, step-by-step guide explains...what COPD is and how it affects your breathingthe most up-to-date medication and treatment optionshow to track symptoms and medicationsessential breathing techniques to improve oxygen intakestrategies for healthy nutrition and gentle exercisewhat to eat and what to avoid, with lists of key COPD foodsWith stories from others with this condition, easy charts for managing everything from your medications to your symptoms, as well as hands-on tips for you and your loved ones, The COPD Solution is your guide to reclaiming your life and living fully with COPD.

"The Busy Person's Guide to Permanent Weight Loss" reveals a weight-loss plan busy people can successfully use in the real world.

Busy people see to everything and everyone-except themselves. The result is unexpected weight gain. But few people have the time to lose weight. This revolutionary approach to weight loss embraces the hectic lifestyle and provides realistic strategies for staying on target, including:

a program that is easily tailored to fit individual dieting needs

helpful dining options for eating out

healthy, flavorful, and FAST menu ideas for eating in, and

time saving strategies to maximize results.

No two people lose weight the same way, and busy people need a plan designed for their schedule. Dr. Jampolis has developed variations of the plan that will work with every lifestyle and every schedule. You can even create your own plan by applying her seven principles into a plan that suits your lifestyle.

The United States spends more than 17% of its GDP on health care, while other developed countries throughout the world average 8.7% of GDP on healthcare expenditures. By 2028, that percentage in the United States is projected to be 19.7% of GDP. Yet all this spending apparently doesn't equate to value, quality, or performance. Among 11 high-income countries the United States healthcare industry ranked last during the past seven years in four key performance categories: administrative efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthcare outcomes. This book presents the implantable medical device (IMD) supply chain ecosystem as a microcosm of how these challenges of affordability and healthcare outcomes are created and are allowed to fester. The IMD Spiderweb, as the authors call it, is exposed as an example of how a wide range of participants-including physicians, health system CEOs, group purchasing organizations, health insurance companies and supply chain executives-become ensnared in a web designed to benefit only one player. The book also details the affordability challenges in the industry caused by the past and current IMD ecosystem and presents a model for meeting those challenges. The result is that the true cost of IMDs is hidden, while hospitals and health systems in the United States pay as much as six times more for some IMDs as their counterparts do in Europe, and prices for the same model of a particular IMD vary wildly even among different U.S. hospitals. While there is a fascination with the latest and greatest device there is also a shroud around visibility into how these products-which include cardiac rhythm management devices such as pacemakers and orthopedic implants such as knees and hips-have performed and are likely to perform in patients. The costs continue to rise not only in healthcare expenditures, but also in death and disability. The IMD spiderweb is presented as a prime lesson in the challenges in healthcare affordability and outcomes that occur throughout the entire healthcare industry. It is also put forward as an opportunity. The story behind how these challenges arose and are deepened by the ecosystem provides a foundation for solutions.

China's current social medical insurance system has nominally covered more than 95 per cent of 1.4 billion population in China and is moving towards the ambitious goal of universal health insurance coverage. Challenges posed by a rapidly ageing population, an inherently discriminatory design of the health insurance system, the disorder of drug distribution system and an immature legal system constrain the Chinese government from realizing its goal of universal health insurance coverage in the long run. This book uses a refined version of historical institutionalism to critically examine China's pathway to universal health insurance coverage since the mid-1980s. It pays crucial attention to the processes of transforming China's healthcare financing system into the basic social medical insurance system alongside rapid socio-economic changes. Financing Healthcare in China will interest researchers and government and think-tank officials interested in the state of healthcare reforms in China. Healthcare specialists outside of East Asia may also be interested in its general study of healthcare in developing countries. Scholars and students interested in the healthcare field will also find this useful.

Are you ready and willing to get to the root causes of problems? As Medicare, Medicaid, and major insurance companies increasingly deny payment for never events, it has become imperative that hospitals and doctors develop new ways to prevent these avoidable catastrophes from recurring. Proactive tools such as root cause analysis (RCA), basic failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), and opportunity analysis (OA) are useful in preventing error, but in healthcare, such tools are often constrained by reticence to share information about mistakes and other problems inherent to the industry. ...well written and extremely applicable to health care. Every healthcare professional should have a copy. - Matthew C. Mireles, President / CEO, Community Medical Foundation for Patient Safety, Bellaire, Texas Patient Safety: The PROACT (R) Root Cause Analysis Approach addresses the proactive methodologies and organizational paradigms that must change in order to support and sustain such activities in the interest of patient safety. Written by reliability expert Robert J. Latino, this book provides a perspective on patient care from outside the health industry and culture. It teaches a proven approach that measures its effectiveness based on patient safety results, rather than compliance, and demonstrates the Return-On-Investment for using RCA to reduce and/or eliminate undesirable outcomes. Addressing the contribution of human error to physical consequences, Latino explores ways to identify conditions that are more prone to result in human error. It also uses FMEA to proactively identify unacceptable risks, and then uses the concepts of RCA to prevent risks from materializing. Are you ready to be tenacious in your approach and completely honest in your assessment?Root Cause Analysis requires courage and honesty. When

This book explores the changing landscapes of the commercialisation of medical care in China. It is the first work of its kind, and discusses how the rise of market socialism, coupled with decollectivisation of agriculture and autonomisation of hospitals in rural and urban China, have fragmented the health service system. The book examines public hospital reforms; the rise of the medical-industrial complex; the emerging public-private partnerships in the health sector; the challenges of financing; and the growing inequalities in access to health services, to present a comprehensive view of the Chinese health care system over the last four decades. This topical book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Chinese studies, Chinese economy, public health, health management, social health and medicine, medical sociology, sociology, political economy, public policy and public administration as well as policymakers and practitioners.

This book explores the hospital via organisational ethnography (OE), an approach that involves a mix of fieldwork methods designed to analyse the hospital which also includes participatory observation, qualitative interviews and shadowing. One way to define a hospital is by its high level of formal organisation, resulting in written or digital communication as the main source of communication in patient journals, minutes and medical and quality guidelines. In contrast, in this book, the aspects of the informal organisation will be the focus. In spite of the many formal regulations of healthcare, hospitals are also chaotic organising places where many different groups of people interact in order to negotiate, to practice and to make sense of daily work tasks. The underlying argument is that, in the mundane everyday life of hospitals, frontline workers and their interactions with patients and local managers remain at the core of organising hospitals. The overall purpose of this book is to report stories back from the field of healthcare, demonstrating how people, spaces and work (as examples of events) become important elements of organising hospitals. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in and across healthcare management, organisation studies, ethnography, sociology, qualitative methods, anthropology, service management and cultural studies.

With over twenty different official regulatory statements worldwide on Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) for pharmaceutical, drug, or medicinal products, two stand out as being the most influential and most frequently referenced. Bridging the gap between U.S. regulations and European Good Manufacturing Practice guidelines, Good Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Practice: Rationale and Compliance gleans the most important substance from the U.S. Current Good Manufacturing Practice, parts 210 and 211 (US cGMPs, 2002) and the European Guide to Good Manufacturing Practice for Medicinal Products for Human and Veterinary Use (EU GMP guide, 2002). The author uses his 40+ years of experience in technical management, production, quality assurance, and distribution within the pharmaceutical industry, offering a hands-on guide to better understand and implement optimal pharmaceutical practices. This book also compares the principle requirements of GMP, and explores the reasoning behind these requirements and ways to comply with them. Relevant topics include personnel, documentation, premises and equipment, production, quality control, self-inspection, recalls, and more. This is an essential guidebook for those who wish to expand their pharmaceutical business in any international capacity.

This reference provides contemporary information on all aspects of Down syndrome, investigating health concerns by age group and by organ system. The text sets out to identify and correct problems before they interrupt developing skills. It includes preventive medical checklists with summaries of appropriate medical intervention; supplies background information about history, genetics and epidemiology; outlines clinical management strategies; establishes guidelines on how to inform parents of the diagnosis and conveys practical suggestions on the handling and care of the infant; and offers a detailed review of the medical literature. Appendices provide information including growth charts and financial checklists.

Although Reliability Engineering can trace its roots back to World War II, its application to medical devices is relatively recent, and its treatment in the published literature has been quite limited. With the medical device industry among the fastest growing segments of the US economy, it is vital that the engineering, biomedical, manufacturing, and design communities have up-to-date information on current developments, tools, and techniques. Medical Device Reliability and Associated Areas fills this need with broad yet detailed coverage of the field. It addresses a variety of topics related - directly and indirectly - to reliability, including human error in health care systems and software quality assurance. With emphasis on concepts rather than mathematical rigor, a multitude of examples, exercises, tables, and references, this is one resource that everyone connected to the medical device industry must have.

Handbook on ICT in Developing Countries: Next Generation ICT Technologies is the second volume of the Handbook of ICT in Developing Countries. The first volume was on the potential implementation and service delivery of the forth-coming 5G networks. Here the focus is on the new technologies and services enabled by 5G networks or broadband Internet networks including artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, augmented reality, Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous driving, blockchain solutions, cloud solutions etc. Some of these are already globally experiencing growth in the existing networks and all of them are expected to grow substantially in the future. Examples: currently, 5% of global organizations have fully adopted AI, but the penetration is expected to increase rapidly before 2025. IoT with 20.35 billion devices connected in 2017 is estimated to show 75.44 billion devices connected in 2025. The expected growth is based on delivering of new value to businesses and citizens. It is, however, not obvious that this growth will also occur in developing countries. Currently, the digital divide between developing countries and developed countries is widening. This is mostly due to the lack of infrastructure and low level of awareness by the businesses and citizens of the value made possible by the new technologies for developing countries. The book discusses the potentials of the new technologies for developing countries and the need for market interventions that will facilitate the demand and supply side of the market. It is designed for a broad audience including practitioners, researchers, academics, policy makers and industry players and influencers. The language and approach to the handbook is a combination of the academic writing style and professional reviews.

A timely inquiry into how domestic politics and global health governance interact in Africa. Global health campaigns, development aid programs, and disaster relief groups have been criticized for falling into colonialist patterns, running roughshod over the local structure and authority of the countries in which they work. Far from powerless, however, African states play complex roles in health policy design and implementation. In Africa and Global Health Governance, Amy S. Patterson focuses on AIDS, the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, and noncommunicable diseases to demonstrate why and how African states accept, challenge, or remain ambivalent toward global health policies, structures, and norms. Employing in-depth analysis of media reports and global health data, Patterson also relies on interviews and focus-group discussions to give voice to the various agents operating within African health care systems, including donor representatives, state officials, NGOs, community-based groups, health activists, and patients. Showing the variety within broader patterns, this clearly written book demonstrates that Africa's role in global health governance is dynamic and not without agency. Patterson shows how, for example, African leaders engage with international groups, attempting to maintain their own leadership while securing the aid their people need. Her findings will benefit health and development practitioners, scholars, and students of global health governance and African politics.

Award-winning author, Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., whose 1978 book ""The Politics of Cancer"" shook the political establishment by showing how the federal government had been corrupted by industrial polluters, has written a book that is sure to be of equal consequence. ""Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War"" is a groundbreaking new book. It warns that, contrary to three decades of promises, we are losing the winnable war against cancer, and that the hand-in-glove generals of the federal National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the private ""nonprofit"" American Cancer Society (ACS) have betrayed us.These institutions, Epstein alleges, have spent tens of billions of taxpayer and charity dollars primarily targeting silver-bullet cures, strategies that have largely failed, while virtually ignoring strategies for preventing cancer in the first place. As a result, cancer rates have escalated to epidemic proportions, now striking nearly one in every two men, and more than one in every three women. This translates into approximately 50 percent more cancer in men, and 20 percent more cancer in women over the course of just one generation.

World Compendium of Healthcare Facilities and Nonprofit Organizations is the most comprehensive index of critical information on healthcare facilities and nonprofits in 72 low and lower-middle-income countries as classified by the World Bank. Presented in an easily accessible format and organized in 72 country chapters, the compendium allows stakeholders to better identify where healthcare services are available and where additional resources are needed.

Spanish in Health Care fills an important gap by offering a panoramic overview of the research on Spanish in health settings that is emerging from a variety of disciplines. Synthesizing research from diverse disciplines such as sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, health services research, behavioral health research, health policy and administration, and social epidemiology, the volume offers a uniquely unified approach to the subject of Spanish in healthcare. This volume will be of interest to researchers in Spanish linguistics, sociolinguistics, health communication, and languages for specific purposes.