Decision Making Tools: BeefTracker mobile app for tracking and analysis of beef herd pasture use and location.

Beef Tracker is a web-based mapping platform that provides beef cattle ranchers a tool to demonstrate that cattle production fits within sustainable ecosystems and to provide regional data to update beef sustainability lifecycle analysis. After digitizing pastures, herd data (class and number of animals) are input on a mobile device in a graphical pasture interface, stored in the cloud, and linked via the web to a personal computer for inventory tracking and analysis. Pasture use calculated on an animal basis provides quantifiable data regarding carrying capacity and beef production. This data is sought by the National Beef Cattle Association to provide more accurate inputs for beef sustainability lifecycle analyses. This application is a useful way for large, complex ranching operations to have all employees remain informed as to cattle movements and ranch wide improvement projects. Better yet, as users make changes to their operation in BeefTracker, histories are automatically recorded and stored in the cloud. After initial testing by university range scientists and ranchers, we have enhanced the BeefTracker application to improve automation for increased ease of use. The following have been added: ability to access and edit the BeefTracker livestock inventory while disconnected from WiFi and cell service, ability to represent portions of a pasture in BeefTracker as irrigated and nonirrigated, and ability to report animal unit harvest (by pasture) calculated on an annual basis. This will provide quantifiable data regarding carrying capacity and subsequent beef production to provide more accurate data inputs for the beef sustainability lifecycle analysis, enhanced map synchronization, and improved security to allow a single individual to access multiple livestock operations without needing multiple user IDs and passwords.

[Satisfaction according to health care insurance systems in an emergency department]. / Satisfacción en un servicio de urgencias según el sistema de aseguramiento en salud.

INTRODUCTION: Health satisfaction is a fundamental measure of the quality of health services. This study aims to validate and analyse the results of a quality of care questionnaire to assess the level of satisfaction of patients attended in the emergency department of a high complexity hospital. METHODS: Observational, cross-sectional study, with a questionnaire designed to assess the quality of service and satisfaction at the end of care in the emergency department. Descriptive statistics of scale were established and presented, as well as determining the construct validity, overall reliability, internal and concurrent validity of an overall against a uni-dimensional scale. RESULTS: A total of 5,961 records were reviewed, most of them (77.3%) reported by patients in the Mandatory Health Plan. High levels of satisfaction overall and by subgroups were found. There were no significant differences between subgroups, with 86.8 for those with Pre-paid Medical Care Plan and 84.4 for mandatory health plan. Cronbach's alpha for the questionnaire was 0.90. CONCLUSIONS: The questionnaire proved to be reliable and valid in determining the quality and satisfaction with care. The results showed high levels of satisfaction overall and in the domains. A low consistency between the results of the multidimensional and unidimensional satisfaction scales suggests that there were aspects of satisfaction not investigated on the multidimensional scale. Ecologically-designed before and after studies are required to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in satisfaction.

Age, geographic, and temporal distribution of fecal shedding of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts in cow-calf herds.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate fecal shedding of Cryptosporidium parvum from California cow-calf herds with respect to age, geographic region, temporal effects, and association with watery feces. ANIMALS: Cows and calves from 38 beef cow-calf operations. PROCEDURE: Fecal specimens were collected and examined for C parvum oocysts, using immunofluorescent microscopy. Associations between age, geographic region, month of collection, watery feces, and likelihood of shedding C parvum were evaluated. RESULTS: 3.9% of cattle were shedding C parvum oocysts. Prevalence of shedding among calves ranged from 0 to 13%, and was 0.6% among cattle > or = 12 months old. The odds of shedding C parvum among 2-month-old calves were 41 times greater than among cattle > 4 months old. The odds of shedding C parvum among cattle tested in May were 8.7 times greater than among cattle tested during June, July, or August. The odds of infected individuals having watery feces were 3 to 4 times greater than for noninfected individuals, but the etiologic fraction was only 8 to 9%. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Substantial fecal shedding of C parvum by cow-calf herds was limited to calves 1 to 4 months old, with low prevalence detected in older animals. Risk of contamination of watersheds with C parvum was limited to those periods when young calves were in the herd. Although the odds of having watery feces were greater for animals infected with C parvum than for noninfected animals, the low etiologic fraction suggests that most calves with watery feces were not infected with C parvum.