Background: The primary objective of this study was to determine how EMS organizations that are piloting patient-centered treatment and transport protocols are approaching the challenges of implementation, reimbursement, and quality assurance. We were particularly interested in determining if these pilot efforts have raised any patient safety concerns.
Methods: We conducted a set of discussions with a small group of key EMS stakeholders regarding the status of pioneering efforts to develop and evaluate innovative approaches to EMS in the United States.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has funded 108 Health Care Innovation Awards, funded through the Affordable Care Act, for applicants who proposed compelling new models of service delivery or payment improvements that promise to deliver better health, better health care, and lower costs through improved quality of care for Medicare, Medicaid, and Children's Health Insurance Program enrollees. CMS is also interested in learning how new models would affect subpopulations of beneficiaries (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe research described in this article was performed to develop a more complete picture of how hospital emergency departments (EDs) contribute to the U.S. health care system, which is currently evolving in response to economic, clinical, and political pressures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study evaluated how the Perfecting Patient Care (PPC) University, a quality improvement (QI) training program for health care leaders and clinicians, affected the ability of organizations to improve the health care they provide. This training program teaches improvement methods based on Lean concepts and principles of the Toyota Production System and is offered in several formats. A retrospective evaluation was performed that gathered data on training, other process factors, and outcomes after staff completed the PPC training.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe U.S. Army uses Combat Support Hospitals (CSHs)-mobile, deployable hospitals housed in tents and expandable containers-to provide surgical and trauma care close to combat action.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPublic health systems vary by degree of centralization, reflecting the distribution of authority, responsibility, and effort between state and local public health agencies. We analyzed data from the 2008 National Association of City and County Health Officials Profile of Local Health Departments survey, and propose an improved composite measure of centralization that can be computed for all local health departments within a state, as opposed to a single state respondent, as done in 1998. While most states' structures (79.
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