Innovative transition interventions to better align healthcare needs in hospitalised medical patients.

Innovative transition interventions to better align healthcare needs in hospitalised medical patients. Swiss Med Wkly. 2017 Nov 09;147:w14515 Authors: Kutz A, Ebrahimi F, Struja T, Greenwald J, Schuetz P, Mueller B Abstract Understanding how best to manage the complex healthcare needs of hospitalised, mostly multimorbid medical patients is an international priority. Healthcare should be effective, safe and provide high quality at a reasonable cost. However, basic logistic and organisational issues of medical ward-based care have received less attention than the medical treatment of specific pathologies. Consequently, we still use old-fashioned care and transition procedures for medical inpatients. This contrasts with dynamic developments in other, non-healthcare industries, where process optimisation is a major part of innovation. Promising new approaches to better align healthcare needs of hospitalised medical patients from clinical trials will help to advance the field significantly. Healthcare costs attributable to the aging, multimorbid population are rising worldwide. One cost driver is the high resource use of in-hospital treatment. In view of the expected demographic evolution of an aging population, better resource allocation is important. As in other countries, the Swiss healthcare system is in the midst of transformation aiming to improve health outcomes of patients at an affordable cost. One important area of redesign is i...
Source: Swiss Medical Weekly - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Swiss Med Wkly Source Type: research