Misadventures in Health Care: Inside Stories presents an alternative approach to attributing the cause of medical error solely to the health care provider. That alternative, the systems approach, pursues why an incident occurs in terms of factors in the context of care that affect the care provider to induce an error. The basis for this approach is the fact that an error is an act, an act is behavior, and behavior is a function of the person interacting with the environment. Eleven vignettes illustrate the importance of the systems approach by describing health care incidents from the perspective of the care providers--the perspective that can identify the factors that actually affect the provider. These stories provide general readers with opportunities to apply their knowledge in analyzing incidents to identify error-inducing factors. This book is important reading for policymakers, researchers and practitioners in law and in all medical specialties, and professionals in the social sciences, human factors, and engineering. In addition to sensitizing the reader to the importance of contextual factors in error, Misadventures in Health Care is a case study reference to supplement texts in professional schools such as law and medicine, as well as the full range of academic disciplines. It also is important reading for the general public because it presents an approach for addressing a very pressing social problem-- that of misadventures in health care.

Increasing evidence has demonstrated that caregivers of dementia victims are at risk for depression and other medical problems. In what ways can health care providers improve or maintain the well-being of dementia caregivers?

This volume provides an overview of emerging themes in dementia caregiving research and presents a broad array of practical strategies for reducing caregiver distress, including interventions for specific populations such as ethnic minority caregivers, male caregivers, and caregivers with diverse sexual orientations. Innovative approaches include the value of partnering with primary care physicians to improve quality of life for both patient and caregiver and the use of technological advances to help distressed caregivers.

A timely, cutting edge book written for clinicians of varying backgrounds who provide direct services to families of dementia victims.
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This Reader includes material relevant to everyone involved in developing new relationships in health and social care. Alongside articles on social care as traditionally conceived, it offers articles from a wide variety of settings, including those in health and education. It brings together classic management texts and material with a management focus, providing a stimulating range of perspectives on the manager's role. In the management of something as complex as care, this must involve:
* listening to service users
* maintaining professional values
* enabling participation
* facilitating learning.
The Managing Care Reader reflects these imperatives as it focuses in on the experience of being in the front line. In four parts, it looks at how managers experience what they do, their managerial responsibilities, the key professional issues, and the importance of the organisational environment. It offers a rich resource for all those undertaking management courses or moving into frontline management roles in the new world of social care.

The follow-up to Clinical Governance: Making It Happen considers the implications of clinical governance for a wide range of health care professionals including nurses, medical directors, and chief executives. The contributors examine the role of the new government organization, NICE, the responsibilities of those working for NHS organizations, and the benefits of patient involvement. Advancing Clinical Governance will enable health professionals to implement clinical governance effectively and with confidence.

Caring for elders outside of institutions is the fastest growing sector of US health care. Building on their research study at the Park Ridge Center, editors Holstein and Mitzen, together with a team of experts, examine the complexities involved in developing an ethics for community-based long-term care. They also challenge policymakers to make home care a more viable option for older people in need. Chapters address many of the ethical and practical problems that arise in the care of older people with physical and mental disabilities--including how to allocate scarce funds, how to keep good caregivers, how to balance concerns of autonomy, risk and safety, and worker stress. The volume is an excellent resource for practitioners, policymakers, and students.

Risk management, assessment and reduction, alongside patient involvement, is an essential part of the current NHS reforms. This book draws together and summarises the latest information on risk in healthcare. It outlines the facts patients need and the level of involvement they require to make informed decisions, and emphasises the practical aspects of how practitioners can best explain risk. The first section of the book concentrates on defining risk and the factors influencing individuals as they make decisions about risk, and the latter part focuses on how clinical teams make decisions about organisational matters and the working environment. All health professionals, including doctors, nurses and managers throughout primary and secondary care will find it an essential reference.

This rich history chronicles the prominent role of Catholic women religious in establishing the hospitals at the core of New York City's extensive Catholic medical network. Beginning with the opening of St. Vincent's Hospital in 1849, Bernadette McCauley relates how determined and pragmatic women of faith worked over the next eighty years to place the Catholic Church in the mainstream of American medicine.

Exploring the differences and similarities between Catholic hospitals and other hospitals, McCauley describes the particular cultural sensibility and management style that informed Catholic health care and gauges the ultimate success of Catholic efforts.

Visionary sisters established, managed, and staffed the hospitals, and they sat on hospital boards and served as administrators at a time when women rarely occupied positions of leadership in business. McCauley illustrates how they at once embraced the world of God and the world of man, playing an unheralded role in the development of the modern hospital while serving the daily needs of New York's immigrant poor.

Encompassing such issues as immigration, the education of nurses and doctors, hospital care and organization, and the role of women in the Catholic church, this extensive study is a valuable resource for scholars and students in the history of medicine, history of nursing, American religion, and women's history.

Despite more than a decade of change, the U.S. health care delivery system is still in the early stages of its transformation into a truly effective, cost efficient and compassionate system. In Healthcare.com: RX for Reform, Dr. David Friend, trained in both medicine and business, delineates the symptoms of our ailing healthcare system and offers a vision for the future.

Even with the enormous turmoil our health care system has undergone - from the proliferation managed care to the closing of hospitals - large numbers of people continue to receive sub-optimal care. The author discusses several symptoms including:
· increasing costs
· uncertain quality of care
· eroding trust in health care vendors
· increasing prospect of shareholder liability
· declining access to providers
· unclear impact on employee productivity

It is time to discard the old, traditional way of thinking about healthcare and take a fresh look at its issues and challenges. To tackle these challenges we must strike a balance between the seemingly dissimilar disciplines of economics, medicine, technology, and politics. Dr. Friend proposes that we tear down the brick and mortar delivery model and replace it with a Virtual Health Care System.

This new model changes the roles of everyone involved in the healthcare system, from the patient to the healthcare provider. It utilizes technology to redesign health care so that it can be delivered with higher quality and greater efficiency. Healthcare.com: RX for Reform examines the actions necessary for the evolution of our current system into a Virtual Health Care System.

Features

This is a practical book for health and IT professionals who need to ensure that patient safety is prioritized in the design and implementation of clinical information technology. Healthcare professionals are increasingly reliant on information technology to deliver care and inform their clinical decision making. Health IT provides enormous benefits in efficiency, communication and decision making. However a number of high-profile UK and US studies have concluded that when Health IT is poorly designed or sub-optimally implemented then patient safety can be compromised. Manufacturers and healthcare organizations are increasingly required to demonstrate that their Health IT solutions are proactively assured. Surprisingly the majority of systems are not subject to regulation so there is little in the way of practical guidance as to how risk management can be achieved. The book fills that gap. The author, a doctor and IT professional, harnesses his two decades of experience to characterize the hazards that health technology can introduce. Risk can never be eliminated but by drawing on lessons from other safety-critical industries the book systematically sets out how clinical risk can be strategically controlled. The book proposes the employment of a Safety Case to articulate and justify residual risk so that not only is risk proactively managed but it is seen to be managed. These simple techniques drive product quality and allow a technology's benefits to be realized without compromising patient safety.

This book is vital for health service managers and clinicians, in both purchaser and provider organizations, in community and hospital settings. It helps the reader understand the principles and purposes of casemix and provides practical examples of using casemix groupings to manage services better. Its lessons are not just for acute services, but provide a way of understanding the complete spectrum of services required for a wide range of conditions, from individuals at risk to those with irreversible and progressive disease. The book explains why casemix groups are useful and the reasons for grouping and analysing patient records. It focuses on the difference between groupings of patients with conditions, and groupings of intervention episodes. Using both enables better identification of the services required to meet the needs of the population, and better communication between purchasers and providers. It has potential for managing the whole healthcare system from a population based perspective.

This text is part of a practical tool-kit designed to help managers take control of their budgets. It should enable managers to understand the reports from management accounts and to know what to expect or demand from them. It has been exclusively developed to suit the specific needs of the NHS.

Offers an account of economic concepts relevant to the nursing profession. The aims of the book are to explain the economic theory underlying health care policy in the National Health Service with particular reference to nursing, and to examine the economic techniques which may be used to improve the understanding of efficiency and cost-effectivenes in the nursing profession.

Managed care organizations are paving the way to the future of health care delivery in the United States and countries around the world. As managed care systems evolve, a major concern is quality. Managed Care Quality: A Practical Guide is a collection of applications and experiences gathered from practicing health professionals in the field of managed care. This first "how to" guide was written to help managed care organizations meet the common objective of ensuring the best quality of services and care. Managed Care Quality: A Practical Guide presents successive steps in implementing quality in health care organizations. It introduces the methods, skills, and practices involved in quality health care programs and offers solutions to problems typically encountered in managed care.

"Depression ist out, Burnout ist in! Depression ist etwas fur Verlierer und Versager. Burnout hingegen haben Gewinner-Typen!" Diese Sichtweise ein und derselben Erkrankung hat sich schleichend in unseren Koepfen verankert, seit Burnout in der ersten Dekade der 2000er Jahre zur neuen Modediagnose wurde. Dieses Buch soll den Blick auf diese Erkrankung weiten und seinen Teil dazu beitragen, sie endlich aus der Ecke des Schweigens heraus zu holen. Denn sowohl die Ursachen als auch die Pravention von Burnout sind zu vielschichtig, um sie ausschliesslich der Psyche zuzuschreiben. Die Autoren zeigen auf, welchen Einfluss der Arbeitsplatz auf die Entstehung von Burnout hat und erlautern zudem die physische Komponente von Erschoepfungssyndromen. Es wird anschaulich zur Pravention informiert, Expertenwissen aus der Praxis vermittelt und Inspirationen fur den Alltag gegeben. Die Leser werden zu aktiven Verhaltensanderungen motiviert und es wird Mut gemacht, sich eine gesunde Lebensfuhrung zu erlauben. Denn es ist hoechste Zeit fur einen Paradigmenwechsel in der allgemeinen Wahrnehmung dieser leider so haufigen Diagnose.

This second edition reviews recent reforms and the likely impact of future developments in management and competition in the NHS. In particular, it reflects the growing importance of primary care and the continuing debates about health care rationing. It concentrates on the realities and how they can be interpreted to help strategists, managers, clinicians, students and those supplying the NHS understand the mechanism of efficient health care delivery.

This comprehensive, yet accessible, text demystifies the challenging area of competence assessement in medicine and the health sciences, providing a clear framework and the tools for anyone working or studying in this area. Written by a single, highly experienced, author, the content benefits from uniformity of style and is supported and enhanced by a range of pedagogic features including cases, questions and summaries. Essential reading for all students and practitioners of medical education, it will also be an invaluable guide for allied health professionals and psychologists with a general interest in assessment, evaluation and measurement and a useful library reference.

This study examines management systems and their appropriateness to the National Health Service. The text considers the role of clinicians in management, recommending increased involvement by clinicians, and arguing that they must take on a greater management role in the reformed health service. The author suggests that conultants are best placed to manage the NHS efficiently and cost-effectively. In a system where non-clinical staff have come to dominate NHS management, and where purchasers determine what services are to be provided and the Patient's Charter defines the parameters of practice, doctors have genuine reasons to be hostile to the idea of involvement in hospital management. However, the author of this book warns of the danger to the health service and to patient care if consultants are sidelined. He considers management systems and the most suitable roles of clinicians in practice. In proposing models for change, he aims to transform the professional lives of clinicians.

As managed care continues to increase in the United States, hospital and system executives consider mergers and acquisitions more frequently for both aggressive and defensive reasons. Predicting Successful Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions can help you learn to analyze data to determine which hospitals are potential candidates for merger and which are risky business ventures. You will learn to take into account not only the marketing and financial elements of mergers and acquisitions, but also the operational factors crucial for success. You will also acquire a set of guidelines and financial analytical approaches that prepare you for forecasting the results of proposed mergers or acquisitions between acute units.Because few new markets are available for hospitals and competition is increasing, performing mergers and acquisitions may be the only route available for organizations wishing to grow. Predicting Successful Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions teaches hospital, system, and other health service industry executives how to keep abreast of their market positions to remain competitive and efficient in the current, intense managed care environment.As you read Predicting Successful Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions, you learn to identify significant financial variables in the market that will differentiate between merger candidates and non-targeted hospitals. The book's coverage of the following topics is important to your understanding of the health care market and the options available: market penetration product development market development diversification significant variables one year prior to merger use of accounting numbers to predict takeovers managed care staffing issuesPredicting Successful Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions gives you a practical, proven model for predicting the outcome of merger and acquisition maneuvers. This model is developed from accurate, consistent, and complete data from California, a trendsetting market in health care delivery, during the years 1984 to 1992. It can be applied not only to hospital mergers and acquisitions, but also to skilled nursing facilities, psychiatric care centers, and rehabilitation facilities seeking growth. Educators and program directors in health care administration programs and executives and boards of imaging centers, surgi-centers, and home health agencies can also employ this model to stimulate growth and expansion.

Rationalization is concerned with making the most effective use of the resources available. In many places where this process is taking place it is plagued with public opposition and misunderstanding. Hitherto, rationalization in the acute care sector has primarily been concerned with closing sites, closing beds, moving beds between services, and moving beds from one site to another. This book discusses the need for rationalization in the context of health service reforms and future strategy. It considers recent changes in the health service, the case for rationalization, health care needs, the role of public relations, the future of the acute care hospital, site and facilities appraisal, and the costs of rationalization. The text is essential reading for managers and clinicians involved in acute care services, non-executive members of boards and trusts, and students of health services management.

This text addresses the key issue of informal payments, or 'red packets', in the Chinese Healthcare system. It considers how transactions take place at the clinical level as well as their regulation. Analysing the practice from the perspectives of institutions and power structure, it examines how institutional changes in the pre-reform and reform era have changed the power structure between medical professions, patients and the Party-state, and how these changes have given rise and perpetuate the practice. Drawing from qualitative data from interviews of medical professionals, the author recognises the medical profession as a major player in the health care system and presents their perception of the practice as the taker of 'red packets' and their interactions with the patient and the state surrounding the illegal practice in an authoritarian power structure. The books considers the institutional reasons that motivate doctors to take, patients to give, and the government to "tolerate" red packets, arguing that the bureaucratization of the medical profession, society of acquaintances and shortage of quality of medical services jointly create an institutional setting that has given rise to these informal payments. Contributing to a rounded understanding of the problems of healthcare reform in China, this book is a key read for all scholars interested in the issue of informal payments and healthcare politics in transition economies.

The need for a more conscious, focused and proactive approach to the management of health-care organizations has increased substantially. One consequence of this is that health-care managers are having to look at managerial approaches and techniques that previously were the province of the private sector. Prominent among those is the whole area of marketing. This work takes a broad approach to the marketing process, highlighting some of the challenges that health-care managers and medical professionals are having to face. Having done this, the authors move on to examine some of the characteristics of good and bad management practice. It is against this background that, in subsequent chapters, they turn their attention to the question of marketing and how it might best contribute to the management of organizations throughout the health sector. Each chapter includes questions and checklists offering scope for applying marketing principles to primary and secondary health-care organizations of all types, sizes and specialities.

This concise guide covers the important angles of your grant application, whether for a health research project or personal training programme, and will help you be among the successful applicants.

The author, a reviewer for grant funding organisations and internationally respected research scientist, gives you the benefit of his experience from both sides of the process in this easy-to-use, readable guide. The book takes you through the grant application process, explaining how to: Present the justification for the proposed projectDescribe the study design clearlyEstimate the financial costsUnderstand a typical review process, and how this can influence the contents of the grant application

The author provides practical advice on a range of project types (observational studies, clinical trials, laboratory experiments, and systematic reviews) to increase the chance that your application will be successful. There are also tips on what to avoid throughout the application.

With generic information about application requirements, "How to Write a Grant Application" is ideal for healthcare professionals seeking a health services or scientific grant.

In the face of the relentless rise in health costs, many countries have had to set priorities so that maximum benefit can be made of unlimited funds. This book shares the experience of those which have taken a lead in this field, and draws on models being developed in Oregon, New Zealand, The Netherlands and Sweden as well as the UK. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each system from which healthcare planners and managers can draw their own conclusions and apply to the situation for which they are responsible.

This book concerns itself with the key question: how to improve health in a cost effective and politically acceptable way. What makes people healthy? Why are the poor less healthy than the rich? Why do some countries have a better health record than others? An Introduction to Health is divided into four parts comprising the determinants of health, health service planning, health service financing, and controlling costs and securing user-friendly services.

Analysing Health Care Organizations seeks to link the world of health policy and management with the academic field of organization studies in a novel and additive way. It outlines the main developments in UK health care management apparent over the last thirty years and explores how they might be (re)seen with the application of some important organizational theories and perspectives. This book draws out contemporary and enduring themes from current literature on health care organization and considers them from a range of theoretical perspectives. Drawing on robust areas of research and some key academics who contribute to work in this field, it is a book relevant both to experts in the field and to those seeking to develop an understanding of health care organization from a theoretical perspective. Analysing Health Care Organizations provides a state of the art introduction foundation for subsequent works that will extend its content; providing a broad introductory overview of this theoretical terrain and setting the scene for further research.