Re-organizing Health Care Systems to Optimize Critical Care Outcomes

摘要: Short-term health outcomes maybe an attractive measure of success for individual hospital departments. For example a coronary care unit (CCU) may feel that improvements in morbidity and mortality following cardiac catheterization are valuable, while intensive (ICU) physician decrease the rate ventilator-acquired pneumonia (VAP) represents significant improvement care. While both these do represent short-term quality, they meaningless to downstream workers if same patients suffering adverse long-term because or related their initial treatment. example, patient who is significantly malnourished from ‘critical polyneuropathy’ burden medical staff, as whole. This especially worrisome problems were preventable during treatment patient’s illness. Moreover, treating physicians be unaware complications, effects not affect quality outcomes.