This open access book describes the results of natural language processing and machine learning methods applied to clinical text from electronic patient records. It is divided into twelve chapters. Chapters 1-4 discuss the history and background of the original paper-based patient records, their purpose, and how they are written and structured. These initial chapters do not require any technical or medical background knowledge. The remaining eight chapters are more technical in nature and describe various medical classifications and terminologies such as ICD diagnosis codes, SNOMED CT, MeSH, UMLS, and ATC. Chapters 5-10 cover basic tools for natural language processing and information retrieval, and how to apply them to clinical text. The difference between rule-based and machine learning-based methods, as well as between supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods, are also explained. Next, ethical concerns regarding the use of sensitive patient records for research purposes are discussed, including methods for de-identifying electronic patient records and safely storing patient records. The book's closing chapters present a number of applications in clinical text mining and summarise the lessons learned from the previous chapters. The book provides a comprehensive overview of technical issues arising in clinical text mining, and offers a valuable guide for advanced students in health informatics, computational linguistics, and information retrieval, and for researchers entering these fields.

The book shows readers exactly how to use Lean tools to design healthcare work that is smooth, efficient, error free and focused on patients and patient outcomes. It includes in-depth discussions of every important Lean tool, including value stream maps, takt time, spaghetti diagrams, workcell design, 5S, SMED, A3, Kanban, Kaizen and many more, all presented in the context of healthcare. For example, the book explains the importance of quick operating room or exam room changeovers and shows the reader specific methods for drastically reducing changeover time. Readers will learn to create healthcare value streams where workflows are based on the pull of customer/patient demand. The book also presents a variety of ways to continue improving after initial Lean successes. Methods for finding the root causes of problems and implementing effective solutions are described and demonstrated. The approach taught here is based on the Toyota Production System, which has been adopted worldwide by healthcare organizations for use in clinical, non-clinical and administrative areas.

Winner of a 2013 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award This practical guide for healthcare executives, managers, and frontline workers, provides the means to transform your enterprise into a High-Quality Patient Care Business Delivery System. Designed for continuous reference, its self-contained chapters are divided into three primary sections: Defines what Lean is and includes some interesting history about Lean not found elsewhere. Describes and explains the application of each Lean tool and concept organized in their typical order of use. Explains how to implement Lean in various healthcare processes-providing examples, case studies, and valuable lessons learned This book will help to take you out of your comfort zone and provide you with new ways to extend value to your customers. It drives home the importance of the Lean Six Sigma journey. The pursuit of continuous improvement is a journey with no end. Consequently, the opportunities are endless as to what you and your organization can accomplish. Forty percent of the authors' profits from this book will be donated to help the homeless through two Baltimore charities. Praise for the book: ... well-timed and highly informative for those committed to creating deep levels of sustainable change in healthcare.- Peter B. Angood, MD, FACS, FCCM, Senior Advisor - Patient Safety, in National Quality Forum ... the most practical and healthcare applicable book I have ever read on LEAN thinking and concepts. - Gary Shorb, CEO, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare ... well written ... an essential reference in the library of all healthcare leaders interested in performance improvement.- Lee M. Adler, DO, VP, Quality and Safety Innovation & Research, Florida Hospital, Orlando; Associate Professor, University of Central Florida College of Medicine ... a must read for all Leadership involved in healthcare. ... I can see reading this book over and over.- Brigit Zamora, BSN, RN, CPAN, CAPA, Administrative Nurse Manager, Florida Hospital, Orlando

Finance has become a key issue in dentistry following major recent changes in legislation that allow dentists to conduct business as a corporate body. However, many dentists receive little formal training in finance and can often miss out on extra profits and tax savings, or become reliant upon accountants and financial advisers who may lack dental expertise. This book aims to equip dentists with the knowledge needed to take an active role in their own finances - including taxes, income and expenditure, property matters and retirement - and provide an insight into what they should expect from a specialist financial adviser to the dental profession. Finance for Dentists has been written primarily for dentists and orthodontists currently in or planning to set up in practice, but will also be of interest to dentists employed in hospitals and other organisations within the NHS.

Exploiting the rich information found in electronic health records (EHRs) can facilitate better medical research and improve the quality of medical practice. Until now, a trivial amount of research has been published on the challenges of leveraging this information. Addressing these challenges, Information Discovery on Electronic Health Records explores the technology to unleash the data stored in EHRs.

Assembling a truly interdisciplinary team of experts, the book tackles medical privacy concerns, the lack of standardization for the representation of EHRs, missing or incorrect values, and the availability of multiple rich health ontologies. It looks at how to search the EHR collection given a user query and return relevant fragments from the EHRs. It also explains how to mine the EHR collection to extract interesting patterns, group entities to various classes, or decide whether an EHR satisfies a given property. Most of the book focuses on textual or numeric data of EHRs, where more searching and mining progress has occurred. A chapter on the processing of medical images is also included.

Maintaining a uniform style across chapters and minimizing technical jargon, this book presents the various ways to extract useful knowledge from EHRs. It skillfully discusses how EHR data can be effectively searched and mined.

Over 7,500 terms, definitions, and acronyms for medical insurance, billing and coding (MIBC) make this the perfect pocket dictionary for both students and practitioners in the MIBC professions! With its small size and concise definitions, this dictionary is ideal for use in class and in the medical office. Practical, consistent alphabetical organization with no subentries and screened thumb tabs make it easy to find the information you need. Etymologies for most entries help you understand the origins of the terminology and build your professional vocabulary. A list of commonly used abbreviations printed in the front and back covers make this your go-to reference for everyday practice.

As global health inequities continue to widen, policymakers are redoubling their efforts to address them. Yet the effectiveness and quality of these programs vary considerably, sometimes resulting in the reverse of expected outcomes. While local political issues or cultural conflicts may play a part in these situations, an important new book points to a universal factor: the prevailing deficit model of assessing health needs, which puts disadvantaged communities on the defensive while ignoring their potential strengths. The asset model proposed in Health Assets in a Global Context International Health and Development offers a necessary complement to the problem-focused framework by assessing multiple levels of health-promoting aspects in populations, and promoting joint solutions between communities and outside agencies. The book provides not only rationales and methodologies (e.g., measuring resilience and similar elusive qualities) but also concrete examples of asset-based initiatives in use across the world on the individual and community levels.

Using the success of other industries as a model, this book promotes methodologies, indicators, and ideas that health care organizations can use to streamline their practices and maintain strong profit margins. Based on the core principles embodied in lean logistics-the systematic process of removing waste and inefficiency throughout the purchasing, supply, distribution, and business operations chain-Streamlining Health Care Operations shows health care leaders how to fundamentally restructure their organizations and effectively balance costs, quality, and patient access to excellent care.

Patient-Centered Care Series Series Editors: Moira Stewart Judith Belle Brown and Thomas R Freeman Primary care clinicians are often unfamiliar with new and effective methods for detecting substance abuse problems in their earliest stages and the majority of patients with substance abuse problems remain undiagnosed. Substance Abuse is written by primary care clinicians and focused to meet the needs of primary care providers demonstrating how the patient-centered clinical method can assist clinicians in learning how to diagnose this complex psychosocial disorder. This book describes how to use state-of-the-art screening techniques and how to understand and motivate patients to decrease or eliminate harmful use of alcohol and drugs. It presents the latest scientific findings and gives examples of using a patient-centered approach as well as describing specific communication skills with samples of dialogue illustrating their use in helping substance-abusing patients. This is essential reading for all family doctors paediatricians gynaecologists psychiatrists nurses social workers psychologists and all clinicians whose practices include substance abusing patients. It will also appeal to counsellors education personnel and all professionals working with substance abusing individuals. For more information on other titles in this series please click here

This book is designed to enable and encourage health professionals and family support workers to include fathers in the process of their work. It focuses on the enormous potential value of accessing men at a time they are known to be particularly receptive - before and after the birth - within the context of providing solutions in the debate about problematic aspects of masculinity and fatherhood. It looks at how important the father's role is within the family environment and how fathers should be encouraged to take part in the upbringing of their children.

Written in a clear, engaging style, Plunkett's Procedures for the Medical Administrative Assistant, 5th Edition provides instruction for all the essential office procedures required by today's medical office administrative assistants in Canada - whether they work in a medical office, a complementary care office, or in a hospital setting. It contains the most current information available in the field, and specifically reflects health care in Canada. Chapters address the diverse skills and knowledge required by a medical office administrative assistant, such as good communication, privacy, customer service, stress management, medical transcription, filing, appointment booking, physical and virtual meetings, billing (ICD-10-CA), and more. This new edition covers Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and features an eye-catching new four colour design and a new Evolve companion site with invaluable instructor and student resources. Written in an accessible, clear, engaging, and easy to understand style. Key terms, learning objectives, end-of-chapter assignments, and discussion questions throughout. Examples and exercises delve deeper into topic areas. Extensive offering of working papers and templates allow for extra practice on tasks and scenarios encountered in the medical office environment. Quintessentially Canadian content and viewpoint. Continuation of the beloved Dr. Plunkett theme. NEW! Four Colour design with new art programme better illustrates current concepts and improves readability and visual appeal. UPDATED! Expanded coverage of healthcare plans across Canada. NEW! Coverage of Electronic Medical Records (EMR). NEW! Evolve site including chapter review questions, review questions, videos, forms and templates, audio glossary, and more! UPDATED! Reflects contemporary standards, technological tools, and terminology used in day-to-day modern health care practice. NEW! New and revised learning tools - including: learning objectives, key terms, assignment boxes, tips, critical thinking boxes, and Did You Know boxes. UPDATED! Reflects current privacy legislation (PIPEDA) and changes to provincial and territorial Freedom of Information acts. NEW! Chapter order and comprehensive Table of Contents.

Providing care and treatment for patients usually requires moving and handling activities, associated with high rates of back injuries for nursing staff. Over the last 20 years a number of guidelines have been published based on professional consensus. Evidence-Based Patient Handling uackles the challenge of producing an evidence base to support clinical practice and is presented in three sections: tasks, equipment and interventions. This book challenges previously held opinions about moving and handling and provides the foundation for future practices.

Controlling costs in health care is rarely something that can be tackled in isolation. Cost control invariably interacts with issues of quality and health care access. Thus, this diverse collection of papers is concerned not just with costs but more importantly with value. Both macro and micro concerns are covered. At the macro level, health care reforms (and especially the 'marketisation' of health care systems) receive some attention. Papers explore how policy prescriptions get translated and modified during implementation, and assess how these prescriptions impact on both the incentive context and subsequent patterns of service delivery. Resource allocation within bureaucratic health systems continues to pose problems and these too are analysed with new solutions being proposed. At the micro level, a number of contributors wrestle with the difficulties of carrying out the economic evaluation of new drugs and technologies. In each case, the wider theoretical and practical implications of balancing costs and benefits are explored. This collection should prove helpful to health care policy specialists, managers and researchers interested in gaining a feel for the real-world application of cost-focused health services research.

Marketing in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector requires a particular set of skills; its intricacies mean planning is an essential prerequisite. The marketing planning system described in this book has been designed to enable marketing and product executives to produce a plan which serves as a dynamic management tool which will help them to get from where they are now to where they want to be next year and thereafter. Now in its second edition, this bestselling book has become the standard text for all product managers, marketing managers and directors working in this demanding industry. John Lidstone and Janice MacLennan have updated the book to embrace best current practice. A new orientation to external analysis and a reworking of the application of SWOT analysis, along with fresh material on sales forecasting and strategy implementation, bring the book up to date with current thinking and industry trends. Marketing Planning for the Pharmaceutical Industry is based on real life experience built up over many years. Each chapter takes the reader through the sequential stages of planning so that by the end they will be able to produce a practical plan ready for implementation. It is the only book of this type which tailors marketing to those working in the sector and as such is a unique, invaluable and indispensable resource.

This book combines models, theory and practical advice that guides clinicians, managers and facilitators to lead integrated primary health care. Using case studies and real life examples, the practical sections are cross-referred to theoretical sections that show how theories of whole system learning and change can be applied in different situations. Exercises help the reader to devise their own tailor-made interventions in small organisations, in networks, and in large institutions. The latest theories about leadership in complex situations are covered and challenges to traditional approaches to research and understandings of health are made. This book is perfect for those who lead or teach change in health care institutions such as primary care organisations, in small organisations such as general practices, and through networks. In particular practitioners and managers who wish to make sense of complex interacting factors will find it of great benefit.

The American system of healthcare is rapidly changing. Today, more and more of an emphasis is being placed on management skills-organizing, coordinating and managing the resources required for providing quality patient care. Medical practitioners are now expected to be efficient administrators as well as skilled clinicians.
Although some may see this as a difficult hurdle, The Healthcare Practitioner's Handbook of Management shows that many healthcare providers are already well-prepared to perform management roles effectively. Through their education and clinical experience, most clinicians now have the problem-solving skills required for management - it's simply a matter of applying these skills to a different arena.
In keeping with this idea, each chapter of The Healthcare Practitioner's Handbook of Management links a management topic to a clinical analogy and presents diagnostic and treatment approaches to the issue at hand. In addition, the book introduces the healthcare professional to the vocabulary and basic theories of management and shows how to transform clinical skills into managerial skills. In today's complex health care environment, these management skills are not just helpful, but essential.

A comprehensive, approachable guide to hospital insurance billing and coding, Understanding Hospital Billing and Coding, 2nd Edition covers everything hospital billers need to know, from patient admission to accounts receivable management and HIPAA. It builds on your knowledge so that you can make a successful transition from the physician/outpatient environment to the hospital setting. Written by coding expert Debra P. Ferenc, this book covers the hospital regulatory setting, the structure and functions of hospital departments, patient accounts and data flow, the billing process, coding, claim forms, reimbursement, accounts receivable management, HIPAA requirements, and much more. UB-04 Claim Simulation on the companion Evolve website lets you practice entering information from source documents into the claim form. Over 300 illustrations and graphics bring important concepts to life. Detailed chapter objectives highlight what you are expected to learn. Key terms, acronyms, and abbreviations with definitions are included in each chapter. Concept Review boxes reinforce key concepts. Test Your Knowledge exercises reinforce lessons as you progress through the material. Chapter summaries review key concepts. Practice hospital cases let you apply concepts to real-life scenarios. UPDATED content reflects the most current industry changes in ICD-10, MR-DRGs, PPS Systems, and the Electronic Health Record. NEW Hospital Introduction chapter includes a department-by-department overview showing how today's hospitals really work NEW Health Care Payers and Reimbursement section follows the workflow of the hospital claim by including successive chapters on payers, prospect payment systems, and accounts receivable management.

Healthcare is noted for using leading-edge technologies and embracing new scientific discoveries to enable better cures for diseases and better means to enable early detection of most life-threatening diseases. However, the healthcare industry globally, and in the US specifically, has been extremely slow to adopt technologies that focus on better practice management and administrative needs. Presently, healthcare is grappling with many challenges both nationally and globally, including escalating costs, a move to a preventative care environment, and a technologically savvy patient with high expectations. The Handbook of Research on Optimizing Healthcare Management Techniques is a pivotal reference source that provides an extensive and rich compilation of various ICT initiatives and examines the role that ICT plays and will play in the future of healthcare delivery. It represents ways in which healthcare delivery can be made superior and the healthcare industry can begin to address the major challenges it faces in the 21st century so that ultimately the most important person in the web of healthcare players, the patient, can be confident about receiving high-quality, cost-effective healthcare. While highlighting topics such as e-health, medical informatics, and patient value, this publication explores the role of supportive technologies as well as the methods of focused, patient-centric outcomes. This book is ideally designed for doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, medical staff, hospital directors, medical boards, IT consultants, health practitioners, academicians, researchers, and students.

Globally, EDs face new challenges as the world's population ages. Visits from older people are predicted to rise for the next 20 years. This practical and accessible book provides essential guidance on assessing the ED care of older patients - and improving it. It assists ED teams to implement changes tailored to their unique environments, providing guidance across all settings regardless of size, location or resources. Experience- and evidence-based elements combine to guide best practices for older patient flow, staff and patient satisfaction, and improving patient health outcomes. The book features proven ideas for creating a geriatric ED such as specific staff training, modifying job roles, implementing new care processes, and adapting physical spaces. An invaluable resource for practising ED clinicians, leaders, administrators, educators, and system change leaders.

This work provides the reader with an understanding of team building in a health care environment, and shows managers how to build a team that is committed to delivering quality. Topics covered include key quality concepts, team exercises, how to be a team member, team empowerment and continuous quality improvement. The facilitator's guide provides all the lesson plans, overhead projection masters and guides to all the exercises necessary for the team leader or trainer to run a teambuilding workshop.

While the implementation of evidence-based medicine guidelines is well studied, there has been little investigation into the extent to which a parallel evidence-based management movement has been influential within health care organizations. This book explores the various management knowledges and associated texts apparent in English health care organizations, and considers how the local reception of these texts was influenced by the macro level political economy of public services reform evident during the period of the politics of austerity. The research outlined in this volume shows that very few evidence-based management texts are apparent within health care organizations, despite the influence of certain knowledge producers, such as national agencies, think tanks, management consultancies, and business schools in the industry. Bringing together the often disconnected academic literature on management knowledge and public policy, the volume addresses the ways in which preferred management knowledges and texts in these publicly funded settings are sensitive to the macro level political economy of public services reform, offering an empirically grounded critique of the evidence-based management movement.

Healthcare service systems are of profound importance in promoting the public health and wellness of people. This book introduces a data-driven complex systems modeling approach (D2CSM) to systematically understand and improve the essence of healthcare service systems. In particular, this data-driven approach provides new perspectives on health service performance by unveiling the causes for service disparity, such as spatio-temporal variations in wait times across different hospitals.The approach integrates four methods -- Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)-based analysis; integrated projection; service management strategy design and evaluation; and behavior-based autonomy-oriented modeling -- to address respective challenges encountered in performing data analytics and modeling studies on healthcare services. The thrust and uniqueness of this approach lies in the following aspects: Ability to explore underlying complex relationships between observed or latent impact factors and service performance. Ability to predict the changes and demonstrate the corresponding dynamics of service utilization and service performance. Ability to strategically manage service resources with the adaptation of unpredictable patient arrivals. Ability to figure out the working mechanisms that account for certain spatio-temporal patterns of service utilization and performance. To show the practical effectiveness of the proposed systematic approach, this book provides a series of pilot studies within the context of cardiac care in Ontario, Canada. The exemplified studies have unveiled some novel findings, e.g., (1) service accessibility and education may relieve the pressure of population size on service utilization; (2) functionally coupled units may have a certain cross-unit wait-time relationship potentially because of a delay cascade phenomena; (3) strategically allocating time blocks in operating rooms (ORs) based on a feedback mechanism may benefit OR utilization; (4) patients' and hospitals' autonomous behavior, and their interactions via wait times may bear the responsible for the emergence of spatio-temporal patterns observed in the real-world cardiac care system. Furthermore, this book presents an intelligent healthcare decision support (iHDS) system, an integrated architecture for implementing the data-driven complex systems modeling approach to developing, analyzing, investigating, supporting and advising healthcare related decisions. In summary, this book provides a data-driven systematic approach for addressing practical decision-support problems confronted in healthcare service management. This approach will provide policy makers, researchers, and practitioners with a practically useful way for examining service utilization and service performance in various ``what-if" scenarios, inspiring the design of effectiveness resource-allocation strategies, and deepening the understanding of the nature of complex healthcare service systems.

This case studies book is a unique, practical, cutting-edge, and indispensable go-to resource for front-line practitioners and educators in medicine. Each case study (chapter) is framed by a set of introductory learning objectives, an evaluation section, thought-provoking discussion questions, and references to further readings. Furthermore, the book is conveniently organized along the continuum of medical care delivery, providing quick access to ad-hoc solutions in safety- and quality-compromised situations, illustrating how skillful communication can be the key to a more effective prevention, intervention, and response to "close calls" and adverse events. The case studies book is unique and innovative in its interdisciplinary integration of the contemporary literature in communication science with current "hot buttons" of patient safety. It manifests a valuable interdisciplinary collaboration by translating the basic tenets of human communication science for practitioners of medicine, providing a conceptual, evidence-based foundation for formulating communication-based practice guidelines to advance patient safety and quality of care. The case studies put communication theory into practice to facilitate experiential learning, granting insights into the breadth and diverse aspects of safe and high quality healthcare delivery. Thought-provoking discussion questions and references for further reading make this book a valuable reference for medical practitioners across the world.