Articles: community-health-services.
-
Cost information is crucial to purchasers and providers of community services but producing reliable costings is easier said than done. Ann Netten reports.
-
To improve emergency cardiac care (ECC) on the national or international level, we must translate to the rest of our communities the successes found in cities with high survival rates. In recent years, important developments have evolved in our understanding of the treatment and evaluation of cardiac arrest. Some of the most important of these developments include 1) recognition of the chain of survival, which is necessary to achieve high survival rates; 2) widespread acceptance that survival rates must be assessed routinely to ensure continuous quality improvements in the emergency medical services (EMS) system; and 3) development of improved methods for performing survival rate studies that will maximize the effectiveness of information gathering and analysis. ⋯ Therefore, the 1992 National Conference on CPR and ECC strongly endorses the position that all ECC systems assess their survival rates through an ongoing quality improvement process and that all members of the chain of providers should be represented in the outcome assessment team. We still have much to discover regarding optimal techniques of CPR, methods for data collection, and optimal structure of an EMS system. Research in these areas will provide the foundation for future changes in EMS systems development.
-
A community development approach has been adopted in the outreach component of the work of the Alexandra Health Centre in South Africa. The importance of local township organizations has been recognized and the Centre is seen not only as providing technical solutions but also as helping people to achieve improved living conditions. This requires clear motivation, rigorous management, purposeful action by teams of health staff, and planning in conjunction with the community.