NICE to HELP: operationalizing National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines to improve clinical practice.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom developed guidelines for the diagnosis, prevention, and management of delirium in July 2010 that included 10 recommendations for delirium prevention. The Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) is a targeted multicomponent strategy that has proven effective and cost-effective at preventing functional and cognitive decline in hospitalized older persons. HELP provided much of the basis for seven of the NICE recommendations.

Learning from the closure of clinical programs: a case series from the Hospital Elder Life Program.

Clinical programs in geriatrics face a challenging fiscal environment. Although recent research offers lessons from successful programs to help others like them sustain operations, it is not clear whether these lessons apply to programs that are beginning to fail. This study takes an approach that is frequently recommended, but rarely applied: examining failed programs to develop guidance for those at risk.

Sustaining clinical programs during difficult economic times: a case series from the Hospital Elder Life Program.

Objectives: To explore strategies used by clinical programs to justify operations to decision-makers using the example of the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP), an evidence-based, cost-effective program to improve care for hospitalized older adults.

Design: Qualitative study design using 62 in-depth, semistructured interviews conducted with HELP staff members and hospital administrators between September 2008 and August 2009.

Setting: Nineteen HELP sites in hospitals across the United States and Canada that had been recruiting patients for at least 6 months.