Bmc Med Inform Decis
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
National survey focusing on the crucial information needs of intensive care charge nurses and intensivists: same goal, different demands.
Although information technology adequately supports clinical care in many intensive care units (ICUs), it provides much poorer support for the managerial information needed to coordinate multi-professional care. To gain a general view of the most crucial multi-professional information needs of ICU shift leaders a national survey was conducted, focusing on the information needs of charge nurses and intensivists. ⋯ The reliability and validity of our survey was found to be good. Our study findings show that care coordination at an ICU is a collaborative process among ICU shift leaders with multiprofessional information needs related to organisation and management, patient admission, and allocation of staff resources. Study findings can be used to identify the most crucial information needs of ICU shift leaders when new information technology is developed to support managerial decision-making during care coordination.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Decision support for hospital bed management using adaptable individual length of stay estimations and shared resources.
Elective patient admission and assignment planning is an important task of the strategic and operational management of a hospital and early on became a central topic of clinical operations research. The management of hospital beds is an important subtask. Various approaches have been proposed, involving the computation of efficient assignments with regard to the patients' condition, the necessity of the treatment, and the patients' preferences. However, these approaches are mostly based on static, unadaptable estimates of the length of stay and, thus, do not take into account the uncertainty of the patient's recovery. Furthermore, the effect of aggregated bed capacities have not been investigated in this context. Computer supported bed management, combining an adaptable length of stay estimation with the treatment of shared resources (aggregated bed capacities) has not yet been sufficiently investigated. The aim of our work is: 1) to define a cost function for patient admission taking into account adaptable length of stay estimations and aggregated resources, 2) to define a mathematical program formally modeling the assignment problem and an architecture for decision support, 3) to investigate four algorithmic methodologies addressing the assignment problem and one base-line approach, and 4) to evaluate these methodologies w.r.t. cost outcome, performance, and dismissal ratio. ⋯ In terms of its performance and the quality of its solution, the heuristic strategy RAND is the preferred method for bed assignment in the case of shared resources. Future research is needed to investigate whether an equally marked improvement can be achieved in a large scale clinical application study, ideally one comprising all the departments involved in admission and assignment planning.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Comparative StudySimulating an emergency department: the importance of modeling the interactions between physicians and delegates in a discrete event simulation.
Computer simulation studies of the emergency department (ED) are often patient driven and consider the physician as a human resource whose primary activity is interacting directly with the patient. In many EDs, physicians supervise delegates such as residents, physician assistants and nurse practitioners each with different skill sets and levels of independence. The purpose of this study is to present an alternative approach where physicians and their delegates in the ED are modeled as interacting pseudo-agents in a discrete event simulation (DES) and to compare it with the traditional approach ignoring such interactions. ⋯ This example shows the importance of accurately modeling physician relationships and the roles in which they treat patients. Neglecting these relationships could lead to inefficient resource allocation due to inaccurate estimates of physician and delegate time spent on patient related activities and length of stay.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Internet-enabled pulmonary rehabilitation and diabetes education in group settings at home: a preliminary study of patient acceptability.
The prevalence of major chronic illnesses, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diabetes, is increasing. Pulmonary rehabilitation and diabetes self-management education are important in the management of COPD and diabetes respectively. However, not everyone can participate in the programmes offered at a hospital or other central locations, for reasons such as travel and transport. Internet-enabled home-based programmes have the potential to overcome these barriers.This study aims to assess patient acceptability of the delivery form and components of Internet-enabled programmes based on home groups for comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation and for diabetes self-management education. ⋯ The Internet-enabled programmes for home-based groups in pulmonary rehabilitation and diabetes education were generally well accepted by the participants. Our findings indicate that conventional programmes have the potential to be delivered in socially supportive group settings at home.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Implementing computerised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health checks in primary care for clinical care and research: a process evaluation.
Paper-based Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health checks have promoted a preventive approach to primary care and provided data to support research at the Inala Indigenous Health Service, south-west Brisbane, Australia. Concerns about the limitations of paper-based health checks prompted us to change to a computerised system to realise potential benefits for clinical services and research capability. We describe the rationale, implementation and anticipated benefits of computerised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health checks in one primary health care setting. ⋯ The Inala Indigenous Health Service has demonstrated that moving from paper-based Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health checks to a system using computerised health checks is feasible and can facilitate research. We expect computerised health checks will improve clinical care and continue to enable research projects using validated data, reflecting the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community's priorities.