The medical quality becomes a very important issue of a scholar and the public opinion. The high quality medical service of patients center and customer direction already has been necessarily prepare conditions to get the best competition advantage of all levels hospital in Taiwan, now.¡CTherefore, all hospital manager believe that promote medical quality is the very important issue¡CThe medical service quality of Emergency Department plays the very important role in the whole hospital. The medical service quality indicator is acknowledged well trusty medical quality measurement tool. Donabedian point out that medical quality measurement is compose of structure¡Bprocess and outcome, and that the outcome quality indicator measurement is the trend¡CAsthma is one of the most common diseases among children. Because of rising morbidity, mortality and medical costs all over the world, asthma becomes a very important issue. So, The purpose of this study is to identify the key factors associated with the of outcomes quality. The example of Pediatric Asthma in a Teaching Hospital. Data take from the Teaching Hospital¡¦s TQIP database through 2003. There are 534 Pediatric asthma patients who are research samples and care take by 25 physicians. The research analyze patient¡¦s and physician¡¦s characteristic to described data, Correlation and Regression with SPSS software. Look for the characteristic what influence the outcome quality of Emergency Department. The outcome quality include that patient¡¦s state after the treatment, patient¡¦s stay time and unscheduled revisit to Emergency Department.¡CRegression analysis showed that. 1.patient¡¦s state after the treatment trend to be inpatient who care by experienced physician, younger, illness serious and reach on day shift. 2.patient¡¦s stay time longer who care by experienced physician, so that the consultations effectiveness should promote to reduce .patient¡¦s stay time¡C3.patient¡¦s stay time longer who younger, so that the staff take care more careful and pay attention to patient¡¦s condition change frequently¡Ato reduce uneasy of long-term stay in Emergency Department. 4.unscheduled revisit ratio in the study is 4.7%¡Abut not discover the correlation factor¡C Integrate above-mentioned¡Athe study find that ¡Aphysician¡¦s and patient¡¦s characteristic will influence medical outcome quality. The project hospital should with different influence factor to draw quality manage policy and stratagem, and improve Emergency Department quality will raise the satisfied degree.

The risk-adjusted Bernoulli cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart developed by Steiner et al. (2000) is an increasingly popular tool for monitoring clinical and surgical performance. In practice, however, use of a fixed control limit for the chart leads to quite variable in-control average run length (ARL) performance for patient populations with different risk score distributions. To overcome this problem, the simulation-based dynamic probability control limits (DPCLs) patient-by-patient for the risk-adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM charts is determined in this study. By maintaining the probability of a false alarm at a constant level conditional on no false alarm for previous observations, the risk-adjusted CUSUM charts with DPCLs have consistent in-control performance at the desired level with approximately geometrically distributed run lengths. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method does not rely on any information or assumptions about the patients' risk distributions. The use of DPCLs for risk-adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM charts allows each chart to be designed for the corresponding particular sequence of patients for a surgeon or hospital. The effect of estimation error on performance of risk-adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM chart with DPCLs is also examined. Our simulation results show that the in-control performance of risk-adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM chart with DPCLs is affected by the estimation error. The most influential factors are the specified desired in-control average run length, the Phase I sample size and the overall adverse event rate. However, the effect of estimation error is uniformly smaller for the risk-adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM chart with DPCLs than for the corresponding chart with a constant control limit under various realistic scenarios. In addition, there is a substantial reduction in the standard deviation of the in-control run length when DPCLs are used. Therefore, use of DPCLs has yet another advantage when designing a risk-adjusted Bernoulli CUSUM chart. These researches are results of joint work with Dr. William H. Woodall (Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech). Moreover, DPCLs are adapted to design the risk-adjusted CUSUM charts for multiresponses developed by Tang et al. (2015). It is shown that the in-control performance of the charts with DPCLs can be controlled for different patient populations because these limits are determined for each specific sequence of patients. Thus, the risk-adjusted CUSUM chart for multiresponses with DPCLs is more practical and should be applied to effectively monitor surgical performance by hospitals and healthcare practitioners. This research is a result of joint work with Dr. William H. Woodall (Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech) and Mr. Justin Loda (Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech). / Ph. D.

<p>UVOD. Sekundarni limfedem ruke je relativno česta komplikacija nakon lečenja raka dojke. Iako se kompleksna dekongestivna terapija smatra &ldquo;zlatnim standardom&ldquo; &quot;, jo&scaron; uvek postoji kontroverza o tome da li dodavanje presoterapije daje bolji terapijski efekat. Stoga je cilj ovog istraživanja bio uporediti efikasnost kompleksne dekongestivne fizikalne terapije (KDFT) u odnosu na kompleksnu dekongestivnu fizikalnu terapiju sa presoterapijom na funkcionalni status, nivo bola i kvalitet života kod pacijentkinja sa sekundarnim limfedemom ruke nakon lečenja raka dojke. MATERIJAL I METODE. Prospektivna, randomizovana, paralelna, nemaskirana studija je obuhvatila 108 pacijentkinja sa sekundarnim limfedemom ruke, prosečne starosti 56,8 &plusmn; 8,5 godina, koje su zavr&scaron;ile operativno lečenje raka dojke pre 57,4 &plusmn; 46,2 meseca. One su randomizovane u 2 grupe: KDFT grupa (kontrolna) ili KDFT+presoterapija grupa (eksperimentalna). Protokol KDFT se sastojao od nege kože, manuelne limfne drenaže, kratkoelastične vi&scaron;eslojne bandaže i vežbi. Osim toga, eksperimentalna grupa je primala presoterapiju (intermitentnu pneumatsku kompresiju), 30 minuta dnevno pri pritisku od 40 mm Hg. Oba protokola su se provodila jednom dnevno, pet dana sedmično tokom 3 sedmice. Ispitanice su podučavane za nastavak samostalnog sprovođenja nege kože, manuelne limfne drenaže i vežbi, kao i za no&scaron;enje kompresivnog rukava, 3 meseca nakon zavr&scaron;etka lečenja. Mere ishoda. Obim ruke, obim pokreta u zglobu ramena, snaga stiska &scaron;ake, vizuelna analogna skala za bol, upitnik Nesposobnost ruke, ramena i &scaron;ake (DASH) za funkciju ruke i upitnik Funkcionalna analiza lečenja raka dojke dojke sa subskalom 4+ za ruku (FACT-B4+) za kvalitet života su ocenjeni pre, neposredno nakon i 3 meseca nakon zavr&scaron;etka lečenja. Za statističku obradu dobijenih podataka kori&scaron;ćene su deskriptivne metode, analiza varijanse (ANOVA) za ponovljena merenja, analiza kovarijanse, Man-Vitni test, hi-kvadrat test i Fi&scaron;erov egzaktni test, prema potrebi. REZULTATI. Od ukupno 108 randomizovanih ispitanica, analizirane su 102 (51 u svakoj grupi). Nije bilo značajnih razlika u demografskim i kliničkim karakteristikama između dve grupe. ANOVA je pokazala značajan uticaj vremena za sve ispitivane varijable (p &lt;0,01), ali ne i značajnu interakciju vreme-grupa (0,07 &le; p &le; 0,99). Tačnije, nije bilo značajne razlike između dve ispitivane grupe u stepenu smanjenja limfedema, obimu pokreta u ramenu, snazi stiska &scaron;ake, nivou bola, DASH skoru i skorovima kvaliteta života merenim FACT -B4+, na kraju tretmana, i nakon 3 meseca praćenja. ZAKLJUČAK. Dodavanje presoterapije kompleksnoj dekongestivnoj terapiji, ne doprinosi boljem ishodu lečenja kod pacijentkinja sa limfedemom ruke nakon operacije karcinoma dojke u poređenju sa samo dekongestivnom terapijom.</p> / <p>BACKGROUND. Secondary lymphedema of the arm is a relatively common complication after breast cancer surgery. Although complex decongestive therapy is considered the &ldquo;golden standard&rdquo;, there is still a controversy as to whether adding pressotherapy is of any value. Thus, the aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of complex decongestive therapy (CDT) against complex decongestive therapy combined with a pressotherapy on functional status, pain, and quality of life in patients with secondary lymphedema of the arm after breast cancer treatment. METHODS. In this prospective, randomized, parallel, non-blind study, we recruited 108 women, mean age 56.8&plusmn;8.5 years, with secondary arm lymphedema who completed breast cancer surgery 57.4&plusmn;46.2 months earlier. They were randomly assigned to a CDT group (control) or CDT+pressotherapy group (experimental). The CDT protocol consisted of skin care, manual lymphatic drainage, short stretch multi-layer compression bandages, and exercises provided by therapists. In addition to that, the experimental group received pressotherapy (intermittent pneumatic compression) for 30 minutes per day at a pressure of 40 mmHg. The treatments were administered once a day, five days a week, for 3 weeks. The subjects were instructed to continue administering the skin care, manual lymphatic drainage, compression sleeve and exercises on their own for 3 months after the end of treatment. Outcome measures. Arm circumference, shoulder range of motion, grip strength, visual analog scale for pain, Disability of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand questionnaire (DASH) for the overall arm function, and Functional Analysis of Cancer Treatment- Breast 4+ (FACT-B4+) for quality of life were assessed before, immediately after, and at 3 months after the end of treatment. The statistical analyses included descriptive methods, analysis of variance (ANOVA) for repeated measures, analysis of covariance, Mann-Whitney U- test, chi-square test, and Fisher&rsquo;s exact test, as appropriate. RESULTS. From a total of 108 subjects randomly assigned, 102 completed the entire protocol (51 in each group), and their data were analyzed. There were no significant differences in demographic and clinical characteristics between the two groups. The ANOVA revealed significant main effect of Time for all studied variables (p &lt; 0.01), but no significant group-by-time interaction (0.07 &le; p &le; 0.99). More specifically, there was no significant difference between the two groups in the degree of lymphedema reduction, shoulder range of motion, grip strength, pain, DASH score, and FACT-B4+ scores either at the end of treatment or at 3-month follow up. CONCLUSIONS. Combining CDT with pressotherapy is no more efficacious than providing CDT alone in patients who present with chronic arm lymphedema after completing breast cancer treatment.</p>

The aims of this thesis were to evaluate caries-preventive measures from a societal perspective, to demonstrate the use of resources in preventive dentistry, to develop and discuss techniques suitable for evaluating dental care costs and outcomes, and to test costs and consequences within a health economic decision model adapted to preventive dental care. The thesis is based on three separate studies with three separate cohorts. In the first study, performed at a single dental clinic, analysis was made of data on dental caries progression over four years in 92 adolescents, along with the use of resources for preventive treatment. In the second study, data from the intervention study “Evaluation of caries-preventive measures” (performed between 1995 and 1999 at 26 dental health clinics throughout Sweden) were used for economic evaluation. Three different approaches to calculating unit cost were discussed, each of which reflect the differences in treatment costs as influenced by the practitioner’s level of skill and competence (salary) and by methods of handling overhead cost allocation. These methods seem useful for evaluating costs in cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The CEA showed an incremental cost-effectiveness over four years of SEK 2 043* per averted decayed (D) enamel (e) and dentine caries, missing (M) and filled (F) surface (S) (DeMFS). In the third study, 82 19-year-old individuals agreed to participate in a pilot exploratory case-control study. Individuals with high caries experience formed the test group while the control group consisted of individuals with no caries experience. To explore whether any differences existed between these two groups in perceived oral health-related quality of life (OHRQOL), two OHRQOL measures were used. Additionally, the willingness of these individuals to pay (WTP) for a preventive strategy was elicited using the contingent valuation method (CVM) within a cost-benefit approach. Using these WTP values, the cost-benefit analyses showed positive net social benefit (NSB) values for both study groups, meaning that the benefits of prevention exceeded the costs. A new outcome measure, Value of Statistical Oral Health (VOSOH), was also presented. Consideration was also made, within the economic framework fundamental to this thesis, of the trend away from a strictly bio-medical paradigm towards a biopsychosocial perspective. The health economic decision model encompasses a number of different techniques for comparing costs with consequences, each with its own advantages and disadvantages and each with its own field of application. These techniques should be seen as complementary rather than competing. Preventive dentistry plays a central role in Swedish dental health care, and it is important that resources are used properly. Accurate evaluation methods are necessary in order to improve the basis for public decision-making; the methods proposed in this thesis seem to be of potential use in this endeavour. *SEK8.54 = US$1 (December 1999).