There are not enough resources in health care systems around the world to fund all technically feasible and potentially beneficial health care interventions. Difficult choices have to be made, and economic evaluation offers a systematic and transparent process for informing such choices. A key component of economic evaluation is how to value the benefits of health care in a way that permits comparison between health care interventions, such as through costs per quality-adjusted life years ...

This book is an introduction to health care as a complex adaptive system, a system that feeds back on itself. The first section introduces systems and complexity theory from a science, historical, epistemological, and technical perspective, describing the principles and mathematics. Subsequent sections build on the health applications of systems science theory, from human physiology to medical decision making, population health and health services research. The aim of the book is to introd...

Patient empowerment as a key component in the future of healthcare systems is the focus of this concise in-depth analysis. It begins by defining patient empowerment as a collaborative partnership linking patients, providers, and systems, and examines the roles of health literacy, provider-patient and system-patient communication, and patient-centered care in the empowerment process. Models of positive and negative empowerment identify optimum conditions when patient and provider participat...

Since the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 and subsequent cases of anthrax in Florida and New York City, attention has been focused on the threat of b- logical warfare and bioterrorism. Biological warfare agents are de?ned as “living org- isms, whatever their nature, or infected material derived from them, which are used for h- tile purposes and intended to cause disease or death in man, animals and plants, and depend for their efforts on the ability to multiply ...

Praise for the Seventh Edition:There are many books on the U.S. healthcare system, but few have the longevity of this one. It is easy to read and straightforward in its approach to difficult subjects such as the rise of the Tea Party and how that movement has impacted healthcare. This update is certainly needed as the landscape has changed dramatically since the previous edition was published.Doody's Medical ReviewsThe eigh...

The mission of healthcare organizations has undergone a remarkable transformation from curing disease to caring for the well-being of populations. While health care policy has explored this domain before, notably in Health Maintenance Organizations, the current efforts to create Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) represent a broader effort to move organizational responsibilities towards population health and care management. Volume 16 of AHCM p...

Since adapting the principles of the Toyota Production System to health care in 2002, Virginia Mason Health System has made enormous leaps forward in quality, safety, patient experience of care, and affordability. It has achieved world-class levels of patient satisfaction and has been honored as one of the safest hospitals in the country.A Leadersh

Reasons for Writing This Book The published literature on the economic appraisal of healthcare acquired infection (HAI) is described by phrases such as: “With so many virtues of the cost-benefit approach identified, it is perhaps puzzling why greater use of economic appraisal has not been made in the area of infection control” [1] “Clinicians should partner with economists and policy analysts to expand and improve the economic evidence available” [2] “the quality of economic evaluations sh...

An accessible primer, Electronic Health Record: A Systems Analysis of the Medications Domain introduces the tools and methodology of Structured Systems Analysis as well as the nuances of the Medications domain. The first part of the book provides a top-down decomposition along two main paths: data in motion workflows, processes, activities, and tas

Health and social care commissioning is a values-driven as well as evidence-driven enterprise. However, whereas there has been an expectation that the evidence-base of commissioning should be made fully explicit, the corresponding values-base has been left largely implicit. The book addresses this subject through a detailed discussion of values and values-based practice, illustrated with case examples, and by developing a critique of existing commissioning. This approach enables commission...

This textbook offers a comprehensive analysis of medical decision making under uncertainty by combining Test Information Theory with Expected Utility Theory. The book shows how the parameters of Bayes’ theorem can be combined with a value function of health states to arrive at informed test and treatment decisions. The authors distinguish between risk-neutral, risk-averse and prudent decision makers and demonstrate the effects of risk preferences on physicians’ decisions. They analyze indi...

Dramatic changes to the structure of health systems since the 1980s has seen the development of large, integrated health organizations designed to provide scale and scope advantages, improve the quality of care and health outcomes, and provide greater bargaining power relative to payers and large employers. This transition has led to greater interest in understanding hospitals and health systems as complex systems. Two important themes emerged from this effort: 1. Creation and organization...