Quantifying patient care intensity: an evidence-based approach to determining staffing requirements.

Over the course of the past decade, the intensity of patient care requirements has increased because of an aging patient population with increasingly complex care requirements and declining length of stay. At the same time, the reimbursement pressure in hospitals continues. The nursing organization of St.

Using bar-code point-of-care technology for patient safety.

Patient safety, in particular, medication safety, has become a major issue for healthcare providers, payers, and patients. Medication errors occur at an alarming rate, and the majority of non-intercepted medication errors originate at the point of care when a nurse mistakenly administers a medication. The 1999 Institute of Medicine report called for increasing the use of information technology to reduce medication errors.

Bloodstream infections in a community hospital: a 25-year follow-up.

Objective: To examine the current status of bloodstream infections (BSIs) in a community hospital as part of a 25-year longitudinal study.

Design: Retrospective descriptive epidemiologic study.

Setting: Community teaching hospital.

Risk for osteoporosis in elderly nuns: need for better recognition and treatment.

Background: The risk for osteoporosis in Catholic sisters (nuns) may be even higher than that of the general female population given their longer life expectancy (82.0 to 89.0 years vs 79.

Managing organizational challenge and change: closing an inpatient unit.

The effects of a turbulent health care delivery market have impacted the day-to-day reality of acute care hospitals. One effect is that the supply of acute care hospital beds currently exceeds the demand, a trend that is expected to continue to the year 2000 and beyond. Nursing administrators at St.

Enhancing customer service in the admitting process.

As a result of participating with 28 other healthcare organizations in a study on benchmarking the hospital admitting process, St. Marys Hospital Medical Center, Madison, Wisconsin, was able to speed-up its admitting process and improve its telephone system to serve patients better. St.

Hepatic and renal dysfunction following nafcillin administration.

Objective: To review four cases of combined hepatic and renal toxicity that may be associated with the administration of nafcillin in adults. This type of adverse event with the use of nafcillin has not been previously documented in the literature.

Data Sources: References from pertinent articles are identified throughout the text.

Measurement of activities of daily living in hospitalized elderly: a comparison of self-report and performance-based methods.

Objective: To determine the accuracy of self-reports of physical functioning by hospitalized elderly.

Design: Comparison of two measures.

Patients And Setting: Two-hundred forty-seven medical inpatients (mean age 78.

Uncompensated and discounted Medicaid care provided by physician group practices in Wisconsin.

A survey of a sample of physician group practices in Wisconsin was undertaken to determine the amounts of charity care, bad debt, and discounted Medicaid care that were provided in 1988. Overall, the physician group practices in the sample reported dollar amounts of uncompensated care and discounted Medicaid care that averaged approximately 7.6% of their total billings for the year (1.