[Quality management in emergency departments: Lack of uniform standards for fact-based controlling]. / Qualitätsmanagement in der Notaufnahme: Fehlende einheitliche Standards zur kennzahlenbasierten Steuerung.

BACKGROUND: The general high occupancy of emergency departments during the winter months of 2014/2015 outlined deficits in health politics. Whether on the regional, province, or federal level, verifiable and accepted figures to enable in depth analysis and fact-based controlling of emergency care systems are lacking. OBJECTS: As the first step, reasons for the current situation are outlined in order to developed concrete recommendations for individual hospitals. METHODS: This work is based on a selective literature search with focus on quality management, ratio driven management, and process management within emergency departments as well as personal experience with implementation of a key ratio system in a German maximum care hospital. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The insufficient integration of emergencies into the DRG systematic, the role as gatekeeper between inpatient and outpatient care sector, the decentralized organization of emergency departments in many hospitals, and the inconsistent representation within the medical societies can be mentioned as reasons for the lack of key ratio systems. In addition to the important role within treatment procedures, emergency departments also have an immense economic importance. Consequently, the management of individual hospitals should promote implementation of key ratio systems to enable controlling of emergency care processes. Thereby the perspectives finance, employees, processes as well as partners and patients should be equally considered. Within the process perspective, milestones could be used to enable detailed controlling of treatment procedures. An implementation of key ratio systems without IT support is not feasible; thus, existing digital data should be used and future data analysis should already be considered during implementation of new IT systems.

An inexpensive molding method for antibiotic-impregnated cement spacers in infected total hip arthroplasty.

Placement of an antibiotic-impregnated cement endoprosthesis facilitates patient mobilization and treatment of infection complicating total hip arthroplasty. Molds, particularly to form the spherical head of the cement endoprosthesis, are not readily available, however. We have found that the rubber bulb portion of an irrigation syringe can be conveniently used as a mold to shape the proximal end of a cement endoprosthesis during surgery.

Anesthesiology critical care medicine fellowship training.

Anesthesiology critical care medicine (ACCM) fellowship training was accredited in 1989, and a small number of graduating anesthesiology residents pursue this additional training. Considering the flexible program guidelines of the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA), we hypothesized that ACCM fellowship training programs varied significantly among the 42 institutions accredited to offer this program. This study of ACCM fellowship programs used a six-part, 57-item questionnaire completed by 36 program directors to describe six aspects of the program: institution size, program director, attending staff, fellowship applicants, curriculum, and the role of the American Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (ASCCA). Ninety-four percent of ACCM fellowships are in facilities with more than 400 beds; 81% of these institutions have more than 20 intensive care unit (ICU) beds as the basis for fellowship teaching. Eighty-three percent of ACCM program directors have practiced critical care for more than 5 yr. All programs had more than one attending physician, with the majority having a multidisciplinary attending staff. During two academic years (1990-1992), 12 (33%) of 36 programs did not have a fellow, resulting in an average of less than one fellow for each program. ACCM fellow involvement in patient care was characterized as "primary" in medical and pediatric ICUs and "cooperative" in surgical ICUs. Fellowship curricula had varied requirements for research, intraoperative anesthesia, and ICU procedures performed by the fellow. In general, program directors believe that salary and on-call responsibility are not important issues for applicants. Nineteen percent of program directors train ACCM fellows longer than the 12 mo required by the ABA and believe that ACCM training should be lengthened.

Hip arthroplasty in mentally impaired patients.

The outcome of elective hip arthroplasty in 11 mentally impaired patients was compared with a cohort of 244 mentally competent patients. The impaired patients had a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, or Down's syndrome, and were unable to give their own surgical consent. Major complications requiring additional surgery occurred in 5 of the mentally impaired patients. Three patients sustained fractures of the femur below the stem and were treated with plating, 1 developed a deep infection requiring prosthesis removal, and 1 developed a thoracic decubiti with bone involvement requiring debridement and rotation flap coverage. Three of these patients also developed urinary tract infections. Of the other 6 mentally impaired patients, 3 developed urinary tract infections, and 1 had a deep venous thrombosis. Functional independence was improved after surgery in the mentally impaired patients. However, the average cost of hospitalization, length of stay, and complication rate were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than those of the mentally competent patients.

[Evaluation of diagnostic efficacy in radiology. Literature review]. / Evaluation de l'efficacité diagnostique en radiologie. Revue de la littérature.

The recent development of new imaging procedures has lead the radiologists to assessing the diagnostic efficacy of the available examination techniques in order to reduce medical care costs. In cooperation with epidemiologists and statisticians, several methods of statistic analysis of the diagnostic efficacy of the procedures such as sensitivity and specificity evaluation, ROC analysis, disease prevalence, predictive value of tests, etc... have been developed. Benefit-cost and cost-efficiency analyses have also been performed, with a view to improving the quality of long-term medical care for the patient at a lower cost both for himself and the society.