Designing a new hospital or medical center around patient safety principles is the most important challenge facing facility planners and architects today. A facility’s layout, equipment, and furnishings strongly influence the effectiveness of care, safety, and satisfaction of patients and caregivers.

Participation in utilization management (UM) activities provides physicians who conduct peer clinical reviews with opportunities for experience and training in applying evidence-based medicine (EBM) principles to clinical practice and healthcare decisions (Davis, et al.,2003; Coomarasamy & Khan, 2004).

Cost considerations are now so integral to our healthcare debates that their absence might make us feel as if something important were missing. Despite the intensity of these discussions, there have been few effective solutions to control or reduce healthcare expenditures.

Berkshire Medical Center (BMC) is a 306-bed not-for-profit community hospital located in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and the flagship facility for Berkshire Health System. BMC is a regional leader in neurosurgery, trauma, stroke care, diagnostic imaging, endoscopy, general surgery, and rehabilitation services.September / October 2006

The increasingly active role played by patients may be the biggest story in healthcare this year.

The recent Institute of Medicine report, Preventing Medication Errors (July 2006), indicates that computerized systems for prescribing drugs show promise for reducing the number of drug-related errors compared to paper-based prescribing.

Passage of the Medicare Part D benefit represents a historic opportunity for millions of older Americans to increase their access to prescription drugs. But the anticipated rise in pharmaceutical use also presents significant potential risks for consumers adding new drugs to their treatment regimens.

In June 2006, a number of vendors demonstrated, for the first time, the application of a new generation of consumer privacy technology to personal control of private health information.

In today’s “information age,” people are constantly inundated with comprehensive, up-to-the-minute health information. Newspapers and periodicals feature articles and bulletins about the latest medical breakthroughs and health hazards.

More than 2 years after the formation by executive order of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), interoperability issues continue to challenge those working to make available comprehensive electronic health records (EHR*) for all American citizens.