Integrated primary and mental health care services: an evolving partnership model.

Topic: Persons with serious psychiatric disabilities experience high rates of medical co-morbidities that, if properly treated, could improve overall well-being and the course of recovery.

Purpose: This brief reports describes how two organizations-Thresholds Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centers and University of Illinois College of Nursing-partnered to offer integrated behavioral and physical health care responsive to the needs of the population and committed to consumer-centered, holistic and preventative care. Most recently, the partnership offers primary care in different community settings through different service models-tele-monitoring, home visits, group visits.

Non-value-added time: the million dollar nursing opportunity.

The dual crises of high healthcare costs and the nursing shortage require a better understanding of inpatient nursing unit activities and, more specifically, their costs and the drivers of inefficiencies. This includes knowing not only how staff spend their time but also how much of this time is non-value-added (NVA) because wasted time leads to both high costs and nurse dissatisfaction. The authors discuss a study that determined the NVA time and costs of acute care nursing unit staff, identified drivers of high-cost NVA time, and compared activities and costs by type of nursing unit.

The balancing act: patient care time versus cost.

Background: With demands to improve patients' clinical outcomes and decrease the escalating costs of inpatient care, nurse executives are focusing on how nurses spend their time rather than just raising staffing levels to positively impact patient outcomes. Because nursing wages constitute a high proportion of a hospital's budget, understanding the costs of nursing activities is critical to managing them.

Methods: An activity-based costing approach was used in 14 medical-surgical nursing units to study nursing activities and their related costs.