Improving Healthcare Quality in Europe Characteristics, Effectiveness and Implementation of Different Strategies


Book Description

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.




Health Professions Education


Book Description

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.




The Future of Nursing


Book Description

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.




Health Care Regulation in America


Book Description

Regulation shapes all aspects of America's fragmented health care industry. While the health and lives of patients as well as almost one-sixth of the national economy depend on its effectiveness, health care regulation in America is bewilderingly complex. 'Health Care Regulation in America' is a guide to this regulatory maze.




The Tyranny of Health


Book Description

Topical and controversial The Tyranny of Health exposes the dangers of the explosion of health awareness for both patients and doctors, using straightforward language to explain the latest health statistics and research findings. Michael Fitzpatrick, a full-time inner-city GP, argues from his day-to-day experience in the surgery that health propaganda is having a very unhealthy effect on the nation. Patients are made unnecessarily anxious as a result of health scares which have greatly exaggerated the risks of everyday activities such as eating beef, sunbathing and having sex. Doctors no longer seem content with treating disease but are encouraged by the government to tell people how to live more and more aspects of their lives. Michael Fitzpatrick concludes that doctors should stop trying to make people virtuous. He argues that we need to establish a clear boundary between the worlds of medicine and politics, so that doctors can concentrate on treating the sick - and leave the well alone.




The Medical-Legal Aspects of Acute Care Medicine


Book Description

The Medical-Legal Aspects of Acute Care Medicine: A Resource for Clinicians, Administrators, and Risk Managers is a comprehensive resource intended to provide a state-of-the-art overview of complex ethical, regulatory, and legal issues of importance to clinical healthcare professionals in the area of acute care medicine; including, for example, physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and care managers. In addition, this book also covers key legal and regulatory issues relevant to non-clinicians, such as hospital and practice administrators; department heads, educators, and risk managers. This text reviews traditional and emerging areas of ethical and legal controversies in healthcare such as resuscitation; mass-casualty event response and triage; patient autonomy and shared decision-making; medical research and teaching; ethical and legal issues in the care of the mental health patient; and, medical record documentation and confidentiality. Furthermore, this volume includes chapters dedicated to critically important topics, such as team leadership, the team model of clinical care, drug and device regulation, professional negligence, clinical education, the law of corporations, tele-medicine and e-health, medical errors and the culture of safety, regulatory compliance, the regulation of clinical laboratories, the law of insurance, and a practical overview of claims management and billing. Authored by experts in the field, The Medical-Legal Aspects of Acute Care Medicine: A Resource for Clinicians, Administrators, and Risk Managers is a valuable resource for all clinical and non-clinical healthcare professionals.




Advances in Patient Safety


Book Description

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.







The Future of Drug Safety


Book Description

In the wake of publicity and congressional attention to drug safety issues, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested the Institute of Medicine assess the drug safety system. The committee reported that a lack of clear regulatory authority, chronic underfunding, organizational problems, and a scarcity of post-approval data about drugs' risks and benefits have hampered the FDA's ability to evaluate and address the safety of prescription drugs after they have reached the market. Noting that resources and therefore efforts to monitor medications' riskâ€"benefit profiles taper off after approval, The Future of Drug Safety offers a broad set of recommendations to ensure that consideration of safety extends from before product approval through the entire time the product is marketed and used.




The Good Doctor


Book Description

Drawing upon real accounts of negligence, incompetence, and distrust, this book seeks to identify the key competencies of a good doctor, the ways in which medical care fails, and the roadblocks to ensuring that every licensed doctor is capable. Arguing that it is possible to improve patient care—by lifting the veils of secrecy and better informing patients, by establishing more effective ways of checking doctors' competence, and by ensuring that medical watchdogs protect the public—this discussion offers an expert's perspective on health care.