Analysis of Waiting-Time Data in Health Services Research


Book Description

Why some patients wait longer than others remains an important question. This book is a reference for health services researchers looking for statistical tools with which to study waiting times. The book offers detailed coverage of statistical concepts and methods for the analysis and interpretation of waiting-time data. It provides analysis from health services research perspective, rather than operations management, and contains a collection of examples.







Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access


Book Description

According to Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access, long waits for treatment are a function of the disjointed manner in which most health systems have evolved to accommodate the needs and the desires of doctors and administrators, rather than those of patients. The result is a health care system that deploys its most valuable resource-highly trained personnel-inefficiently, leading to an unnecessary imbalance between the demand for appointments and the supply of open appointments. This study makes the case that by using the techniques of systems engineering, new approaches to management, and increased patient and family involvement, the current health care system can move forward to one with greater focus on the preferences of patients to provide convenient, efficient, and excellent health care without the need for costly investment. Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access identifies best practices for making significant improvements in access and system-level change. This report makes recommendations for principles and practices to improve access by promoting efficient scheduling. This study will be a valuable resource for practitioners to progress toward a more patient-focused "How can we help you today?" culture.




OECD Health Policy Studies Waiting Times for Health Services Next in Line


Book Description

The report reviews a range of policies that countries have used to tackle waiting times for different services, including elective surgery and primary care consultations, but also cancer care and mental health services, with a focus on identifying the most successful ones.




OECD Health Policy Studies Waiting Time Policies in the Health Sector What Works?


Book Description

This book provides a framework to understand why there are waiting lists for elective surgery in some OECD countries and not in others. It also describes how waiting times are measured in OECD countries and reviews different policy approaches to tackling excessive waiting times.




The Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire Short-form (PSQ-18)


Book Description

This article reports on the development and psychometric properties of a short-form version of the 50-item Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire III (PSQ-III). The short-form instrument, the PSQ-18, contains 18 items tapping each of the seven dimensions of satisfaction with medical care measured by the PSQ-III: general satisfaction, technical quality, interpersonal manner, communication, financial aspects, time spent with doctor, and accessibility and convenience. PSQ-18 subscale scores are substantially correlated with their full-scale counterparts and possess generally adequate internal consistency reliability. Moreover, both the magnitude of the correlation coefficients and the overall pattern of correlations among PSQ-18 subscales are highly similar to those observed for the PSQ-III. These preliminary analyses support the use of the PSQ-18 in situations where the need for brevity precludes administration of the full-length PSQ-III.




Health Care Benchmarking and Performance Evaluation


Book Description

This new edition continues to emphasize the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to create optimization-based benchmarks within hospitals, physician group practices, health maintenance organizations, nursing homes and other health care delivery organizations. Suitable for graduate students learning DEA applications in health care as well as for practicing administrators, it is divided into two sections covering methods and applications. Section I considers efficiency evaluations using DEA; returns to scale; weight restricted (multiplier) models; non-oriented or slack-based models, including in this edition two versions of non-controllable variable models and categorical variable models; longitudinal (panel) evaluations and the effectiveness dimension of performance evaluation. A new chapter then looks at new and advanced models of DEA, including super-efficiency, congestion DEA, network DEA, and dynamic network models. Mathematical formulations of various DEA models are placed in end-of-chapter appendices. Section II then looks at health care applications within particular settings, chapter-by-chapter, including hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Other chapters then explore home health care and home health agencies; dialysis centers, community mental health centers, community-based your services, organ procurement organizations, aging agencies and dental providers; DEA models to evaluate provider performance for specific treatments, including stroke, mechanical ventilation and perioperative services. A new chapter then examines international-country-based applications of DEA in health care in 16 different countries, along with OECD and multi-country studies. Most of the existing chapters in this section were expanded with recent applications. Included with the book is online access to a learning version of DEA Solver software, written by Professor Kaoru Tone, which can solve up to 50 DMUs for various DEA models listed in the User’s Guide at the end of the book.




Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining in Healthcare


Book Description

This book presents recent work on healthcare management and engineering using artificial intelligence and data mining techniques. Specific topics covered in the contributed chapters include predictive mining, decision support, capacity management, patient flow optimization, image compression, data clustering, and feature selection. The content will be valuable for researchers and postgraduate students in computer science, information technology, industrial engineering, and applied mathematics.




Process Mining in Healthcare


Book Description

What are the possibilities for process mining in hospitals? In this book the authors provide an answer to this question by presenting a healthcare reference model that outlines all the different classes of data that are potentially available for process mining in healthcare and the relationships between them. Subsequently, based on this reference model, they explain the application opportunities for process mining in this domain and discuss the various kinds of analyses that can be performed. They focus on organizational healthcare processes rather than medical treatment processes. The combination of event data and process mining techniques allows them to analyze the operational processes within a hospital based on facts, thus providing a solid basis for managing and improving processes within hospitals. To this end, they also explicitly elaborate on data quality issues that are relevant for the data aspects of the healthcare reference model. This book mainly targets advanced professionals involved in areas related to business process management, business intelligence, data mining, and business process redesign for healthcare systems as well as graduate students specializing in healthcare information systems and process analysis.




Heart Disease in Men


Book Description

Heart disease is an umbrella term for a number of different diseases affecting the heart. As of 2007, it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, killing one person every 34 seconds in the United States alone.Heart disease is synonymous with cardiac disease but not with cardiovascular disease which is any disease of the heart or blood vessels. Among the many types of heart disease are, for example: Angina; Arrhythmia; Congenital heart disease; Coronary artery disease (CAD); Dilated cardiomyopathy; Heart attack (myocardial infarction); Heart failure; Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; Mitral regurgitation; Mitral valve prolapse; and Pulmonary stenosis. This new book brings together important recent research on heart disease with a focus on men and heart disease.