NI health and social care inequalities monitoring system (HSCIMS) - health inequalities in Northern Ireland: key facts 2015

This key facts publication provides an interim update to the NI health & social care inequalities monitoring system (HSCIMS) regional reports which are published every other year. It presents a summary of the latest position and inequality gaps between the most deprived areas and both the least deprived areas and the NI average in addition to a regional comparison with rural areas for a range of health outcomes included within the HSCIMS series, in addition to the health survey Northern Ireland (HSNI).

Exploring Ideas from Hospitality, Health Management, and Design for Senior Housing and Care: Insights from 2016 CIHF Senior Living Roundtable

The first Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures (CIHF) roundtable, held in April 2016, brought together senior-level executives, educators, and leaders in senior housing and care to share experiences and exchange ideas. CIHF roundtables are purposely limited to approximately 25 to 30 participants “at the table” to foster discussion on a more intimate basis than traditional conferences. In addition to the formal participants, students, faculty, and guests observed and interacted during the event and attended a separate panel discussion, and reception the evening before. Students, faculty, and industry leaders also met together at a working luncheon session to brainstorm ideas for recruiting and training young talent for careers in the senior housing and care industry.

What is best for Esther? Building improvement coaching capacity with and for users in health and social Care-A case study

While coaching and customer involvement can enhance the improvement of health and social care, many organizations struggle to develop their improvement capability; it is unclear how best to accomplish this. We examined one attempt at training improvement coaches. The program, set in the Esther Network for integrated care in rural Jonkoping County, Sweden, included eight 1-day sessions spanning 7 months in 2011. A senior citizen joined the faculty in all training sessions. Aiming to discern which elements in the program were essential for assuming the role of improvement coach, we used a case-study design with a qualitative approach. Our focus group interviews included 17 informants: 11 coaches, 3 faculty members, and 3 senior citizens. We performed manifest content analysis of the interview data. Creating will, ideas, execution, and sustainability emerged as crucial elements. These elements were promoted by customer focusembodied by the senior citizen trainershared values and a solution-focused approach, by the supportive coach network and by participants' expanded systems understanding. These elements emerged as more important than specific improvement tools and are worth considering also elsewhere when seeking to develop improvement capability in health and social care organizations.

Care planning for aggression management in a specialist secure mental health service: user involvement

This paper describes an audit of prevention and management of violence and aggression care plans and incident reporting forms which aimed to: (i) report the compliance rate of completion of care plans; (ii) identify the extent to which patients contribute to and agree with their care plan; (iii) describe de-escalation methods documented in care plans; and (iv) ascertain the extent to which the de-escalation methods described in the care plan are recorded as having been attempted in the event of an incident. Care plans and incident report forms were examined for all patients in men's and women's mental health care pathways who were involved in aggressive incidents between May and October 2012. In total, 539 incidents were examined, involving 147 patients and 121 care plans. There was no care plan in place at the time of 151 incidents giving a compliance rate of 72%. It was documented that 40% of patients had contributed to their care plans. Thematic analysis of de-escalation methods documented in the care plans revealed five de-escalation themes: staff interventions, interactions, space/quiet, activities and patient strategies/skills. A sixth category, coercive strategies, was also documented. Evidence of adherence to de-escalation elements of the care plan was documented in 58% of incidents. The reasons for the low compliance rate and very low documentation of patient involvement need further investigation. The inclusion of coercive strategies within de-escalation documentation suggests that some staff fundamentally misunderstand de-escalation.

Exploring Health in Military Families: Does Continuity of Care Influence Patient Satisfaction?

To ensure mission-readiness for military members, support for their families is essential. Military family health and health care satisfaction has been a neglected area of study in this population. Satisfaction can be defined in terms of patient-, provider-, and practice-level factors and is influenced by continuity of care, which is often poor in transient military populations. Using a modified patient satisfaction survey, this study found that both the number of moves and assigned providers were significantly associated with continuity of care in military spouses. Further, continuity of care was a significant predictor of satisfaction with military health care.

Health information management : What business are we in?

Developments in information technology will drive the change in records management; however, it should be the health information managers who drive the information management change. The role of health information management will be challenged to use information technology to broker a range of requests for information from a variety of users, including he alth consumers. The purposes of this paper are to conceptualise the role of health information management in the context of a technologically driven and managed health care environment, and to demonstrat e how this framework has been used to review and develop the undergraduate program in health information management at the Queensland University of Technology.