The questions are no longer whether to use or make an evaluation, but how well we use one or carry one out.' 'As both volume and skills in healthcare increase, there is a parallel increase in the need to evaluate the outcomes and the effects of services rendered. In this book John Ovretveit furnishes us with timely, thoughtful and thorough guidelines for evaluation methods applied to health services.' - Gudmund Hernes, Minister of Health, Norway. A basic textbook which describes the range of approaches to evaluation in healthcare and policymaking, and challenges some of the assumptions of the evidence based healthcare movement. For health practitioners, managers and policy advisers who need to use or carry out an evaluation, but who may be confused by the variety of approaches and about what we mean by 'evidence'. The book is also useful to researchers who need to know about the strengths and weaknesses of different types of evaluation and about the practice and politics of evaluation. It describes principles, concepts and methods for evaluating health treatments, services, policies and organizational interventions. The strength of this book is its even-handed and accessible overview of the many different evaluation perspectives and methods used in the health sector. Its practical and multidisciplinary approach shows how to ensure that evaluation results in action. The author draws on his eighteen years experience as an evaluator and gives frameworks and examples which have been tried and tested in workshops, teaching and distance learning materials which explain the complexities of evaluation. The reader will find this an invaluable introduction and reference book for understanding the increasingly important role which evaluation is playing in everyday clinical, managerial and policymaking work. Winner of the 1998 European Health Management Association distinguished publication award.
Improvement in healthcare has not delivered on its promise, outside of a few examples. This is because it has not sufficiently been linked to resources - thus argues this book. Value improvement focuses on changes which raise quality and lower costs. This is effective because it unites professions, patients, payers and purchasers in a common cause and uses tested solutions and methods. Value improvement works with the realities of resources and politics, and with knowledge of what is effective in different situations. The purpose of healthcare is to reduce avoidable suffering. This includes the suffering unknowingly caused by a service, when we do not use an effective treatment or make an error. These events are also waste, and they have a financial cost. The good news is that we now have more knowledge about these adverse or subA-optimal events, and about effective solutions. We now know these organisational events are not inevitable and we can prevent them. We are also beginning to discover that many, if prevented, will reduce the costs of healthcare. Improving diagnosis and prescribing reduces both avoidable sufferA- ing and higher costs, as do hygiene strategies and changes to ensure professionals pass on correct information about patients to the next caregiver. We are entering an exciting time in healthcare, equivalent to earA- lier periods of medical discoveries. The discoveries of improvement and implementation science in organisations are now being linked to the discoveries about the costs and savings of quality and safety changes. This knowledge is beginning to be used by clinicians, manA-agement and purchasers, and alliances are forming to bring in a new era of quality and safety improvement. The aim of this book is to show how ordinary leaders can comA-bine improvement knowledge with resource knowledge to reduce suffering and the costs of healthcare. It does not assume good inforA-mation technology or special resources to help improvement. It recA-ognises that our colleagues may not want to spend time on this work, and often do not do what they are asked to do. It recognises some improvements are not value improvements: they do not add value for patients and reduce costs. Where improvements do both, we may find that the financing system penalises the provider for making the change, or we cannot covert the saved resources into lower costs or higher income. Thus, it is also about both short A-term and long A-term value improvements. It is about how managers and other leaders find and awaken energy in themselves to make improvement, and bring this energy to life in the people they work with. How we channel this energy in effective ways and enable others to make improvement. It is about tomorrow, and next week and about where the real innovation, creativity and inspiration happens: in the routine but changing, short A-staffed, semiA- chaos of most health services. We are not powerless and can choose not to accept failings of the health system as being outside of our influence. A few others have shown what can be achieved when we join in a common cause and use these effective methods. The challenge is for us is to do this in our local service and to connect our services.
This book describes how health service staff and managers can apply quality methods to the special circumstances of health services, and tackle the many conflicting demands on these services in the 1990s. It is based on applied research into quality methods in a range of public and commercial services, and explains the theory and the practice of the "service quality revolution.
An exploration of how people from different professions and agencies work together to meet the health and social needs of people in a community. It is about making the most of different skills to meet people's needs and creating satisfying and supportive working groups. It is the details of making community care a reality. The effectiveness and quality of care a person receives depends on getting the right professionals and services, and also on the support given to the person's carers. Services must be co-ordinated if the person is to benefit, but co-ordination is more difficult with the increasing change, variety and complexity of health and social services in the 1990s. This book challenges the assumptions that services are best co-ordinated by multiprofessional and multi-agency teams, and that community care teams are broadly similar. It demonstrates when a team is needed and how to overcome differences between professions, and between agency policies and philosophies. Drawing on ten years of consultancy research with a variety of teams and services, the author gives practical guidance for managers and practitioners about how to set up and improve co-ordination and teamwork. The book combines practical concerns with theoretical depth drawing on organization and management theory, psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, economics and government studies.
An exploration of how people from different professions and agencies work together to meet the health and social needs of people in a community. It is about making the most of different skills to meet people's needs and creating satisfying and supportive working groups. It is the details of making community care a reality. The effectiveness and quality of care a person receives depends on getting the right professionals and services, and also on the support given to the person's carers. Services must be co-ordinated if the person is to benefit, but co-ordination is more difficult with the increasing change, variety and complexity of health and social services in the 1990s. This book challenges the assumptions that services are best co-ordinated by multiprofessional and multi-agency teams, and that community care teams are broadly similar. It demonstrates when a team is needed and how to overcome differences between professions, and between agency policies and philosophies. Drawing on ten years of consultancy research with a variety of teams and services, the author gives practical guidance for managers and practitioners about how to set up and improve co-ordination and teamwork. The book combines practical concerns with theoretical depth drawing on organization and management theory, psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, economics and government studies.
Improvement in healthcare has not delivered on its promise, outside of a few examples. This is because it has not sufficiently been linked to resources - thus argues this book. Value improvement focuses on changes which raise quality and lower costs. This is effective because it unites professions, patients, payers and purchasers in a common cause and uses tested solutions and methods. Value improvement works with the realities of resources and politics, and with knowledge of what is effective in different situations. The purpose of healthcare is to reduce avoidable suffering. This includes the suffering unknowingly caused by a service, when we do not use an effective treatment or make an error. These events are also waste, and they have a financial cost. The good news is that we now have more knowledge about these adverse or subA-optimal events, and about effective solutions. We now know these organisational events are not inevitable and we can prevent them. We are also beginning to discover that many, if prevented, will reduce the costs of healthcare. Improving diagnosis and prescribing reduces both avoidable sufferA- ing and higher costs, as do hygiene strategies and changes to ensure professionals pass on correct information about patients to the next caregiver. We are entering an exciting time in healthcare, equivalent to earA- lier periods of medical discoveries. The discoveries of improvement and implementation science in organisations are now being linked to the discoveries about the costs and savings of quality and safety changes. This knowledge is beginning to be used by clinicians, manA-agement and purchasers, and alliances are forming to bring in a new era of quality and safety improvement. The aim of this book is to show how ordinary leaders can comA-bine improvement knowledge with resource knowledge to reduce suffering and the costs of healthcare. It does not assume good inforA-mation technology or special resources to help improvement. It recA-ognises that our colleagues may not want to spend time on this work, and often do not do what they are asked to do. It recognises some improvements are not value improvements: they do not add value for patients and reduce costs. Where improvements do both, we may find that the financing system penalises the provider for making the change, or we cannot covert the saved resources into lower costs or higher income. Thus, it is also about both short A-term and long A-term value improvements. It is about how managers and other leaders find and awaken energy in themselves to make improvement, and bring this energy to life in the people they work with. How we channel this energy in effective ways and enable others to make improvement. It is about tomorrow, and next week and about where the real innovation, creativity and inspiration happens: in the routine but changing, short A-staffed, semiA- chaos of most health services. We are not powerless and can choose not to accept failings of the health system as being outside of our influence. A few others have shown what can be achieved when we join in a common cause and use these effective methods. The challenge is for us is to do this in our local service and to connect our services.
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