Estrategias hospitalarias frente a una pandemia / Hospital strategies against a pandemic

La humanidad, que a lo largo de la historia ha sufrido pandemias que han ocasionado la muerte de millones de personas, es actualmente azotada por la pandemia de COVID-19. El propósito de este artículo es brindar estrategias para un manejo oportuno y eficiente que contribuya a disminuir la morbilidad y mortalidad a nivel hospitalario. Para la elaboración de este artículo se revisó bibliografía de instituciones certificadas en el tema, encontrando que la mayor parte de publicaciones se centran en el abordaje de una pandemia como país; es muy poca la literatura que se centra en el abordaje hospitalario. Es por ello que, de acuerdo con la experiencia actual, en la que hemos observado serias debilidades en los hospitales de la red hospitalaria del sector público, se sugieren estrategias, adecuadas a nuestro medio, para que las autoridades hospitalarias puedan hacerle frente a una pandemia...(AU)

Business intelligence and capacity planning: web-based solutions.

Income (activity) and expenditure (costs) form the basis of a modern hospital's 'business intelligence'. However, clinical engagement in business intelligence is patchy. This article describes the principles of business intelligence and outlines some recent developments using web-based applications.

Utilization of health technologies-Do not look where there is a light; shine your light where there is a need to look! Relating national health goals with resource allocation decision-making; illustration through examining the Israeli healthcare system.

Innovative health technologies are often the focus of attention. However, in the allocation of public resources for improving health, the focus should be on the health needs of the population. It is the need that should be analyzed first, and decision makers should then evaluate the full range of interventions available, whether new or old, to meet this need. This is in contrast to analyzing the technology first and then characterizing the need it meets, which is the current practice in reimbursement decision-making in several countries. The identified health need should define national health goals, and these goals should be proactively assimilated into the reimbursement decision-making process. Differential reimbursement rates could reflect the relative contribution of the technology to the unmet health need.

Strategic planning for the TotalCare Cancer Center at Los Alamitos Medical Center with data analysis of caseloads before and after opening.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the significance of the new TotalCare Cancer Center at Los Alamitos Medical Center during its first 6 months of operation. This study evaluates the short-term impact that the center has had on patient caseload in the areas of infusion and radiation oncology. METHODS: Two 6-month time blocks were evaluated using the cancer registry database. Cases were reviewed to determine the number of patients that received chemotherapy and radiation therapy at Los Alamitos Medical Center prior to and directly after the initiation of the TotalCare Cancer Center to determine if the initial goals laid out by the administration were met. RESULTS: The same number of patients received chemotherapy at the hospital prior to and directly after the center was opened and few patients received radiation therapy in the first 6 months after the center was opened. CONCLUSION: The TotalCare Cancer Center did not appear to have the desired impact on caseload as was desired by the administration within the first 6 months of operation. However, overall caseload did increase over that time period, concluding that there may be a lag in overall affect of the new center.

Incorporating efficiency in hospital-capacity planning in Germany.

Hospital occupancy is a key metric in hospital-capacity planning in Germany, even though this metric neglects important drivers of economic efficiency, for example treatment costs and case mix. We suggest an alternative metric, which incorporates economic efficiency explicitly, and illustrate how this metric can be used in the hospital-capacity planning cycle. The practical setting of this study is the hospital capacity planning process in the German federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz. The planning process involves all 92 acute-care hospitals of this federal state. The study is based on standard hospital data, including annual costs, number of cases--disaggregated by medical departments and ICD codes, respectively--length-of-stay, certified beds, and occupancy rates. Using the developed metric, we identified 18 of the 92 hospitals as inefficient and targets for over-proportional capacity cuts. On the upside, we identified 15 efficient hospitals. The developed model and analysis has affected the federal state's most recent medium term planning cycle.

Target delivery, service modernisation and system reform: reinventing planning in the English National Health Service.

PURPOSE: Aims to focus on the imperative to achieve national activity and performance targets in secondary care as set out in the NHS Plan. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The paper is in the form of "notes from the front line" that are based on the experience of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT). FINDINGS: These include that planning needs to be understood as the means by which the NHS manages its future; that planning needs to become more technically and methodologically sophisticated; that planning is a process rather than a description of an organisational function; and that the NHS will only resolve the shortage of planning competencies once planning is seen as a management disciple. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: On the basis of the feedback received from drafts of this paper, it is suggested that the conclusions drawn are generally applicable across the English health service.

A simple method to optimize hospital beds capacity.

OBJECTIVE: The number of acute hospital beds is determined by health authorities using methods based on ratios and/or target bed occupancy rates. These methods fail to consider the variability in hospitalization demands over time. On the other hand, the implementation of sophisticated models requires the decision concerning the number of beds to be made by an expert. Our aim is to develop a new method that is as simple to use as the ratio method while minimizing the roundabout approaches of these methods. METHOD: A score was constructed with three parameters: number of transfers due to lack of space, number of days with no possibility for S unscheduled admissions and number of days with at least a threshold of U unoccupied beds. The optimal number of beds is the number for which both the mean and the standard deviation of the score reach their minimum. We applied this method to two internal medicine departments and one urological surgery department and we compared the solutions proposed by this method with those put forward by the ratio method. RESULTS: The solutions proposed by this method were intermediate to those calculated by the local and national length of Stays ratio methods. Simulating an unusual increase in admission requests had no consequence on the bed number selected, indicating that the method was robust. CONCLUSION: Our tool represents a real alternative to the ratio methods. A software has been developed and is now available for use.

The importance of being earnest about your business plan.

Writing about the importance of business planning for a financially oriented audience may equate with preaching to the choir.

Strategic planning: the first step in the planning process.

Strategic planning is a systematic process through which an organization builds commitment among key stakeholders to goals and priorities which are essential to its mission and vision, and responsive to the operating environment. Strategic planning is the first step in a comprehensive planning process that also includes business planning and implementation planning. If all three steps are carried out in sequence, strategic planning can be a very effective means of educating the stakeholders about where the cancer program is and where it is going, gaining support and commitment for the direction that the cancer program will take, and assuring that everyone's expectations can be managed effectively. Unfortunately, some organizations and cancer program leaders misunderstand the process. Too often, strategic planning is used as a stand-alone activity. This article will describe what strategic planning is, how it should smoothly lead into business planning and implementation planning, and how to avoid the pitfalls that sometimes arise during the strategic planning effort.

Method to determine the bed capacity, different approaches used for the establishment planning project in the University Hospital of Nancy.

In France hospital bed capacity is determined according to a national and regional authorization which has been established by the regional hospital agency. The bed capacity evolution in a hospital is fixed by considering the different proposals of the hospital in negotiation with the regional hospital agency. Types of beds are differentiated according to the patients' needs : medicine, surgery and obstetrics. The first approach is taken at the national level and then at the regional level using a specific ratio of beds for 100,000 inhabitants in each category. For a given hospital, the authorized number of beds takes into consideration their occupation. Target bed occupation ratios were fixed in 1992 and are still in use. In the establishment project of the University Hospital of Nancy (developed over a five year period) four approaches have been formulated and their results have been compared. In this study, the two traditional methods of bed ratio per 100,000 inhabitants and target bed occupation have been updated according to the present conditions of hospitalisation; the third method is based on the reapportionment of the present patients and the possible risk to the hospital for refusing patients. The last method consists of determining the expected pathologies five years in advance in Lorraine and the beds needed to treat them. These four methods have given consistent results under the accepted revised target occupation bed ratios in accordance with the reduction of the length of stay between 1992 and 1999.

A journey to create a new patient-record system.

In fundamentally redesigning its patient-record system, West Park focused on the patient's story, streamlined the many chart forms, and integrated the documentation with a new care model that would bring the disciplines in closer collaboration. We involved stakeholders in the redesign process at every step, relying on leadership and collaboration throughout the organization. We sought to fit the new system to the organization--to "West Park it", and we continue to refine the new charting forms.

Criterios en la aplicación del triage hospitalario / Criteria for the application of hospitalary triage

Esta es una revisión que trata sobre la técnica y aplicación del triage durante un incidente. Se enfoca la reorganización hospitalaria para manejar la efectividad de la atención. Se hace un análisis del sistema START, del código de colores y de la categorización quirúrgica de los pacientes. Se menciona también los criterios para realizar transferencias de acuerdo al triage prehospitalario