There are numerous empirically described problems of communication in healthcare. The doctor/patient relationship is fundamental to many such problems. The changing nature of healthcare and the doctor/patient relationship is explored in this thesis. An increasing evidence base demonstrates that patient outcomes in healthcarea re directly relatedt o clinical communication. However, more fundamental than patient outcomes is the very nature of personhood and the effects illness has on individual autonomy. A theory of human need provides the foundation for discussion. Autonomy in healthcare is discussed in these terms and is argued as a basic human need. Moreover, human communication is argued as a basic human need using the same theoretic approach. It therefore follows logically that health professionals have the same duties and responsibilities to meet basic human communication needs on the same terms as those for autonomy. The relationship between autonomy and communication is shown to be a reflexive one. A theory of democratic communication is drawn on to describe the type of communication that will meet autonomy and communication needs. This is set in the context of healthcare. Consent in healthcare is used to show how far we have come in meeting communication and autonomy needs. Given the arguments o far it is reasonable to expect medical education to respond to the changing and recognised needs of the users of healthcare. The role of effective communication in medical education programmes is explored. Finally, a strategic approach to organising and delivering a communication curriculum is proffered which tries to meet both the philosophically and democratically argued basic needs. The resulting communication curriculum combines theoretic foundations with a pragmatic approach to the problems of clinical practice. If the approaches in this thesis are followed then communication can no longer be perceived as something doctors do after they have completed other medical tasks. Effective doctors have to be effective communicators in order to meet patients' needs.

Abstract available through Journal of Vestibular Research.

Patients with dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease and particularly those in early stages, are susceptible to become victims of predators: Their agnosia (see Case 1) prevents them from detecting and accurately interpreting subtle signals that otherwise would have alerted them that they are about to fall for a scam. Furthermore, their judgment is impaired very early in the disease process, often before other symptoms manifest themselves and usually before a diagnosis is made. Patients with early stages of dementia are therefore prime targets for unscrupulous predators, and it behooves caregivers and health care professionals to ensure the integrity of these patients. In this case study, we discuss how a man with mild Alzheimer’s disease was about to fall for a scam were it not for his vigilant wife. We discuss what went wrong in the patient/caregiver interaction and how the catastrophic ending could have been avoided or averted.

No description available.

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, 2010) has resulted in efforts to make healthcare more affordable and effective. One strategy for making healthcare more affordable and effective is the integration of behavioral health and primary care. In today’s healthcare system, it is estimated that approximately one in three patients seen in a primary care setting meet the criteria for a mental health disorder and another third – while not meeting those criteria – are experiencing psychological symptoms that impair their functioning (Kessler, 2005). Despite the evidence supporting behavioral health services in a primary care setting, treatments tend to be diagnosis specific (Archer et al., 2012; Lemmens, Molema, Versnel, Baan, & deBruin, 2015) and as such do not capture patients’ varied presentations. Patient feedback offers a potential strategy to improve the quality of services provided. Patient feedback is the use of measures administered at each session to assess distress and track progress. There is a robust psychotherapy literature demonstrating the effectiveness of using routine progress monitoring in clinical practice but it has not been evaluated in an integrated care setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of patient feedback in this setting. Preliminary results of this ongoing study revealed there was a moderate feedback effect using both the ORS (d = 0.38) and PHQ-9 (d = 0.12) as the outcome measures. Using the ORS as the outcome measure, patients in the feedback condition demonstrated faster treatment gains, which suggests that they improved faster compared to those patients in the TAU condition. Additionally, patients in the feedback condition incurred significantly more reliable change compared to TAU. However, this result was not replicated when the PHQ-9 was used to measure outcome. Overall, the results suggest that PCOMS may be a potentially useful quality improvement strategy.

Context: As one of the major causes of death and disability in Canada, research into the treatment and prevention of acute cerebrovascular syndrome (ACVS) remains a priority for clinicians, researchers and the general public. Understanding the relationship between current treatment practices of a rapid stroke clinic and patient outcomes is an essential part of measuring success and considering opportunities for quality improvement. Objective: This study compared the 90-day and 1-year hospital admission and mortality outcomes of patients who were referred to and seen in a rapid stroke clinic (the shows) following an initial transient neurological event (TNE) with those who were referred to but not seen in the same clinic (the no-shows). The specific outcomes examined were stroke events, cardiovascular events and all other hospital events. Methods: In this post-test only non-equivalent group design, data on patient outcomes was collected in the Victoria-based Stroke Rapid Assessment Unit (SRAU) between 2007 and 2013. Analysis included an assessment of group equivalency for possible confounders (age, sex and severity score) and two sets of multivariate logistic regressions were conducted on nine outcomes. Results: An independent t-test revealed there was a statistically significant difference between the mean age of the shows (mean= 68.26) and no-shows (mean= 69.90) (p<0.01). While the proportion of males and females in each of the groups was similar (Fisher’s Exact test, p = 0.831, ns), the severity score of the treatment group (mean= 3.64) was statistically more severe in the show group than the no-show group (mean= 3.50; t = 2.137, p<0.05). Controlling for age, sex and severity score, the odds ratios (ORs) were calculated to compare the odds of various outcomes in the treated (shows) versus the untreated (no-shows) patients groups. ORs for the 90-day and 1-year hospital admissions for stroke-related events were 0.071 (p<0.01) and 0.091 (p<0.01), respectively; the OR for 1-year stroke deaths was 0.167 (p<0.01), indicating a strong protective factor related to attending the clinic appointment. For the cardiovascular outcomes, the ORs for hospitalizations were 0.967 (ns) at 90-days and 0.978 (ns) within 1-year and the OR for the 1-year cardiac-related deaths was 0.391 (ns). For all other outcomes, the ORs were 0.525 (p<0.01) for hospitalizations within 90-days, 0.579 (p<0.01) for hospitalizations within 1-year and 0.299 (p<0.01) for deaths within 1-year. These findings remained consistent with re-analysis excluding subjects who had an event within 5.4 days of their initial TNE. These latter finding largely rules out the possibility that the primary reason the no-shows did not make their clinic appointment, was due to a subsequent hospital event. Conclusion: The ORs for the outcomes show a protective effect of stroke and all other hospital outcomes (but not cardiac events) for patients treated in the rapid assessment clinic. The exclusion of patients who experienced an outcome while waiting for a clinic appointment, lowered the protective effect of the treatment and emphasized the need for rapid assessment but did not alter the main study conclusions. Future research that explores factors influencing appointment adherence and patient attitudes towards acute treatment of TNEs might reveal strategies that could help to reduce the number of patients that remain untreated and at a higher risk for poor outcomes. / Graduate

The high expenditure of healthcare in the United States (U.S.) does not translate into better quality of care. Indeed, the U.S. healthcare system is recognized by its lack of efficiency and waste (which represents about 20% of the country’s healthcare expenses). Lack of coordination is one of the most referenced causes of waste in the U.S. healthcare system, and preventable hospital readmissions have been acknowledged to be evidence of poor coordination of care. In fiscal year 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established financial penalties for inpatient care reimbursements in hospitals with excessive readmissions. All the same, the preliminary results of this effort have yet to result in a consistent reduction of readmission rates. Research in healthcare policy is usually reported through case studies, which makes it difficult to apply that research to different spatiotemporal contexts. Additionally, relevant research can remain overlooked due to the challenge of translating it from other fields. Therefore, in order to create effective healthcare policies, a system that can provide the most accurate information to stakeholders about their decisions and the future impact of those decisions should be developed. This dissertation proposes a decision-based support system that could aid hospital administrators in the design of disease-specific interventions that target specific groups of patients who are at risk for readmission. First, the use of disease-specific interventions that were designed to reduce readmissions will be explored. Second, a variety of predictive tools for readmissions will be developed and compared to complete the search for the best tool. Finally, an optimization model bringing together the two ideas will be formulated so that hospitals can use it to design interventions. This model will target specific patients depending on their risk for readmission and minimize the cost of intervention while ensuring quality hospital performance. In sum, this work will help hospital administrators to better plan in the reduction of readmissions and in the implementation of interventions. In addition, it will deepen knowledge about the impacts of economic penalties on hospitals and facilitate the construction of stronger arguments for decisions about healthcare policy.

Intensive Care Units (ICUs) account for over 10 percent of all US hospital beds, have over 4.4 million patient admissions yearly, approximately 360,000 deaths, and account for close to 30% of acute care hospital costs. The need for critical care services has increased due to an aging population and medical advances that extend life. The result is efforts to improve patient outcomes, optimize financial performance, and implement models of ICU care that enhance quality of care and reduce health care costs. This retrospective chart review study examined the dose effect of APN Intensivists in a surgical intensive care unit (SICU) on differences in patient outcomes, healthcare charges, SICU length of stay, charges for APN intensivist services, and frequency of APNs special initiatives when the SICU was staffed by differing levels of APN Intensivist staffing over four time periods (T1-T4) between 2009 and 2011. The sample consisted of 816 randomly selected (204 per T1-T4) patient chart data. Study findings indicated reported ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) rates, ventilator days, catheter days and catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rates increased at T4 (when there was the lowest number of APN Intensivists), and there was increased pressure ulcer incidence in first two quarters of T4. There was no statistically significant difference in post-surgical glycemic control (M = 142.84, SD= 40.00), t (223) = 1.40, p = .17, and no statistically significant difference in the SICU length of stay among the time-periods (M= 3.27, SD = 3.32), t (202) = 1.02, p= .31. Charges for APN services increased over the 4 time periods from $11,268 at T1 to $51,727 at T4 when a system to capture APN billing was put into place. The number of new APN initiatives declined in T4 as the number of APN Intensivists declined. Study results suggest a dose effect of APN Intensivists on important patient health outcomes and on the number of APNs initiatives to prevent health complications in the SICU.

No description available.

This dissertation seeks to investigate how hospital reimbursement policy affects the quality of care provided to patients when providers compete for healthcare labor that is limited in supply. Cost payment systems fully reimburse a provider’s the total cost of healthcare provided, fixed reimbursements are predetermined at a fixed amount and mixed reimbursements have a cost and fixed component. The first chapter investigates how government reimbursement schemes that induce quality competition among health providers affects the choice of quality of care provided to patients and how these choices depend on the labor supply constraints in the healthcare labor market. We build a theoretical model that explicitly incorporates the healthcare labor supply into a framework of a hospital cournot competition, to show how a hospitals' choice of quality of patient care will be directly influenced when there is a shortage of health personnel in a regulated reimbursement system. We find that multiple equilibria can arise in healthcare markets depending on the consumers’ sensitivity to quality and hospitals’ share of cost when investing in quality. Contrary to existing findings, we are able to show that the effects of reimbursement schemes can vary in different equilibria and in different labor market situations. For instance, in high patient quality sensitivity hospital markets under a high hospital quality equilibrium, we can show that a cost payment scheme decreases a provider’s quality of care while a fixed reimbursement scheme increases quality. More importantly we find that the labor market constraint increases or decreases the effect of the reimbursement system on quality of care. Consequently, the labor constraint changes the quality choice of the provider as compared to the quality level that would have been induced by a particular reimbursement’s policy incentive for quality. In the second chapter, we carry out some of the testable implications of the theoretical finding from the first chapter. This paper investigates how higher Medicare payments brought about by geographical reclassification affects a provider’s quality of care as captured by registered nurses (RN) and licensed practical nurses (LPN) staffing, as well as patient outcomes (mortality, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, peptic ulcer deep vein thrombosis) and length of stay when hospitals compete for nurses. In contrast with past literature, we specifically allow for asymmetry in the hospital’s choice of quality, by permitting coefficients to differ across reclassified hospitals in response to the higher Medicare payments. This asymmetry is based on the relativity of the labor cost faced by the hospital due to competition for nurses in the healthcare labor market. Using Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) data from the period 2001 to 2011, we find that hospitals who face relatively higher labor costs will post reclassification increase their RN to LPN staffing ratio as compared to hospitals in their post geographical reclassification areas. A higher RN staffing by these hospitals will result in an improvement of quality of care as the incidence of patient complications due to Pneumonia, Peptic Ulcer and Deep Vein Thrombosis reduces for hospitals that were reclassified after allowing for asymmetry in response to the higher Medicare payment due to differences in labor costs (Pneumonia and Peptic Ulcer complications improve as compared to pre re-class area hospitals and DVT in both pre/post re-class area hospitals). Length of stay also increases for hospitals that faced a higher labor cost while mortality and UTI complications remain unchanged post reclassification. Finally, in the third chapter, we examine how the for profit (FP) or not for profit (NFP) status of hospitals impact the choice of nurse staffing and patient outcomes when there is an increase in provider reimbursement due geographical reclassification. Most of the past studies focus on mortality and length of stay in FPs and NFPs, we extend these studies by investigating the impact of geographical reclassification on patient outcomes that have been established as outcomes sensitive to nursing care. From our regression results, with reference to the ratio of RN to LPN staffing, we find evidence that an increase in Medicare payments will have a greater impact in FPs than in NFPs as compared to their pre re-class geographical area control hospitals. We also find that in hospitals that face a relatively higher labor cost as compared to their controls; (1) There is no difference in the impact of reclassification between FPs and NFPs (2) There is a better response from FPs than NFPs to geographical reclassification when the outcome considered is DVT as evidenced by a decreases in cases of DVT (3) NFPs decrease length of stay whiles FPs increase length of stay as compared to their post re-class geographical area hospitals.