The Medical journal of Australia
-
Multicenter Study
A classification of hospital-acquired diagnoses for use with routine hospital data.
To develop a tool to allow Australian hospitals to monitor the range of hospital-acquired diagnoses coded in routine data in support of quality improvement efforts. ⋯ Monitoring quality improvement requires timely hospital-onset data, regardless of causation or "preventability" of each complication. The CHADx uses routinely abstracted hospital diagnosis and condition-onset information about in-hospital complications. Use of this classification will allow hospitals to track monthly performance for any of the CHADx indicators, or to evaluate specific quality improvement projects.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Tobacco use and measuring nicotine dependence among urban Indigenous pregnant women.
To examine patterns of nicotine dependence, the value of the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) and its correlation with self-reported tobacco use and urinary cotinine concentrations among pregnant Indigenous women in Townsville. ⋯ The use of the FTND in Indigenous pregnant women may assess physical nicotine dependence, thus providing information that will help in preparing quit-smoking plans, including tailoring of pharmacological support to individual need. Quit-smoking programs that better address the behavioural and psychological aspects of smoking within the Indigenous community in Australia are needed.
-
General practitioners hold the key to expanding access to treatment.
-
The major problem of access block to acute hospital admissions in Australia needs a more radical response than a focus on increasing inpatient beds, as suggested recently. Australia needs to take on board recent changes in United Kingdom hospital systems, which have revolutionised patient flow during acute admissions and dramatically improved efficiency, clinical quality and outcomes. Accident and emergency departments in the UK became recognised as part of acute hospital dysfunction. ⋯ AMAAUs require supervision by a new style of acute general physician, who drives timely management of acute medical patients, defines patient needs, estimates the likely date of discharge, and selects the most appropriate inpatient clinical stream. These reforms are staff-intensive and expensive, but cost-effective and patient-focused. They highlight the need for an adequate scale for acute clinical services and defined streams of care within individual hospitals, as well as explicit networking at a regional level to guarantee specialist acute services when needed.