Genital Chlamydia Trachomatis Infection: Prevalence, Risk Factors and Adverse Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes in Children and Women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Genital (CT) has adverse health outcomes for women and children. In pregnant women, the infection causes adverse obstetric outcomes including pelvic inflammation, ectopic pregnancy, and miscarriage. In children, it causes adverse birth outcomes such as skin rash, lesions, limb abnormalities, conjunctivitis, neurological damage, and even death.

Developing an Evidence-Based Technical Assistance Model: a Process Evaluation of the National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Child, Youth, and Family Mental Health.

The National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Child, Youth, and Family Mental Health (NTTAC) supports the development and implementation of systems of care (SOC) for youth with serious emotional disorders (SED) and their families. This article presents results from a process evaluation of NTTAC, conducted to support the Center's quality improvement and contribute to the knowledge base around provision of technical assistance (TA). The evaluation used a mixed methods approach with data collection focused on a defined subset of NTTAC TA recipients-recipients of federal Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children SOC grants.

Proceedings of the 3rd Biennial Conference of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC) 2015: advancing efficient methodologies through community partnerships and team science : Seattle, WA, USA. 24-26 September 2015.

Introduction to the 3rd Biennial Conference of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration: advancing efficient methodologies through team science and community partnerships Cara Lewis, Doyanne Darnell, Suzanne Kerns, Maria Monroe-DeVita, Sara J. Landes, Aaron R. Lyon, Cameo Stanick, Shannon Dorsey, Jill Locke, Brigid Marriott, Ajeng Puspitasari, Caitlin Dorsey, Karin Hendricks, Andria Pierson, Phil Fizur, Katherine A.

Parenteral antibiotic use in acute-care hospitals: A standardized analysis of fourteen institutions.

Despite increasing concerns regarding the need to optimize appropriate antibiotic use in hospitals, a standardized method for evaluating interinstitutional antibiotic use has not been developed. To address this issue, antibiotic use was analyzed by means of a uniform methodology among 14 acute-care hospitals. Data were standardized by use of a defined daily dose for each antibiotic while adjusting for patient volume by calculating use per 1000 patient-days.

Relationship between practice characteristics of primary care internists and unnecessary hospital days.

Background: Inpatient utilization review remains a useful approach for hospitals to achieve cost savings, however utilization review efforts need to become more focused and sophisticated.

Methods: In order to identify physicians with a higher percentage of unnecessary hospital days, and to analyze how their practice characteristics distinguished them from their colleagues, 364 consecutive admissions of 57 primary care internists were reviewed concurrently, on a daily basis. Days without acute hospital level of care that occurred while patients were awaiting placement in a rehabilitation or in a chronic care facility were adjusted out of the calculation.

The UR hot line: purpose and process.

Institutions embarking on utilization endeavors require mechanisms to identify and quantitate institution-specific problems. This article describes, with examples, the application of a utilization hot line as a cost-effective tool to focus efforts and solve immediate problems.

Enhanced length of stay management through monitoring of discharge planning parameters.

Traditional data collection in discharge planning programs has been largely retrospective, measuring the patient's length of stay and unnecessary hospital days at the point of discharge. Although the data collection is useful, it does not lend itself to corrective actions on a concurrent basis. Carney Hospital has developed a data base that monitors patient status daily in order to identify when a length of stay problem is developing and when corrective actions are succeeding.

Formatting departmental quality assurance minutes to meet internal and external needs.

This article presents a method that is helpful in achieving compliance with the JCAHO medical staff monitoring standards. Since the QA activity of the medical staff is of great importance to the institution, it is imperative that monitoring activities are clearly documented and easily evaluated. Through the use of a standardized departmental minutes format, each clinical department is prompted to address the monthly activity relating to each of the basic quality assurance functions.

This OWL (outpatient work-up liaison) would not fly. Environmental factors foil attempt to shift unnecessary inpatient days to the outpatient setting.

The last days of many appropriate hospital admissions have been identified as unnecessary when utilized for providing diagnostic or therapeutic modalities that could be provided in an outpatient setting. An outpatient work-up liaison team (OWL) was established to facilitate the completion of evaluations or therapy in the community. In spite of the commitment of experienced personnel and the cooperation of the staff physicians and hospital departments, the effort was unsuccessful.

Comparison of efficiency of cardiologists and internists in managing patients with suspected myocardial chest pain.

The charts of 56 patients with chest pain who were admitted to the critical care units to rule out myocardial infarction were evaluated concurrently and retrospectively to compare the efficiency of cardiologists and internists. The number of unnecessary days used to rule out myocardial infarction, the number of unnecessary inhospital days used after ruling out myocardial infarction, the length of cardiac work-up, and the length of hospital stay were determined for 23 patients of cardiologists and 33 patients of internists. The cardiologists' patients had fewer unnecessary days after ruling out myocardial infarction (2.

Overutilization of serum electrolyte determinations in critical care units. Savings may be more apparent than real but what is real is of increasing importance.

Electrolyte (E) utilization by medical and surgical house staff in the critical care units of a community teaching hospital was audited over a two-month period. One hundred forty-five patients involved in 708 patient days had 924 sets of electrolytes (SE). Of the 581 SE that were ordered as an additional set within 24 h, 10% were considered unnecessary and 65% could have had a single E substituted for the complete set.