The cost of a "bad hire:" how search firms can help

What's the key to competitive advantage and total quality management? O'Connor believes it's hiring top-quality people that are a "good fit" with your organization, and he tells how a search firm can help you do just that.     

Phone technology systems help practices communicate with patients

Modern computer technology provides practices with modalities to communicate directly with patients at low cost. This article describes several TeleVox systems that allow managers to confirm appointments, issue recalls, and transmit laboratory and other data. Other systems allow patients to leave messages for their providers more directly and also allow practices to supply educational information on medical topics while patients are on hold.     

A UK scheme to help small firms control health risks from chemicals: toxicological considerations

The UK has developed a simple scheme to provide practical control advice to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), to assist them in their risk assessments and risk management decisions. This scheme makes use of toxicological hazard information indicated by R-phrases assigned under the European Union (EU) classification system, to assign substances to hazard bands. In the UK scheme, the allocation of substances to hazard bands according to R-phrases has taken into account three key factors: whether or not the toxicological endpoint has an identifiable dose threshold; the seriousness of the resultant health effect; and the relative exposure levels at which toxic effects occur. Based on all these considerations, R-phrases have been allocated to hazard bands within the scheme. An evaluation exercise has been undertaken, to compare the output of the scheme with established health-based occupational exposure limits, for more than 100 substances. The results of this exercise demonstrate that as far as possible, the scheme recommends control strategies which should provide adequate control. This scheme is potentially a very powerful means of helping SMEs adequately control chemical health risks in the workplace. Since it utilises the EU-agreed classification system, the scheme can be applied to any substance supplied and used in the workplace and it may also be used internationally.     

An introduction to a UK scheme to help small firms control health risks from chemicals

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH), provide the main British legislation to protect against health risks arising from hazardous substances used at work. Under the regulations, employers have a duty to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and take steps to ensure exposure to adequately controlled. The paper by Topping et al. (1998)concluded that small firms need more basic, readily available advice on how to effectively control hazardous substances. To meet this need the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Advisory Committee on Toxic Substances (ACTS) have developed a new scheme for the UK. It involves a simple system of generic risk assessments to identify appropriate control strategies and a series of control guidance sheets providing good-practice examples of those strategies for common operations. The approach builds on earlier industry risk banding schemes and HSE's general approach to risk assessment and risk management. To help ensure the advice reaches small firms, HSE is seeking to involve key intermediaries in its dissemination. This paper describes the rationale for the new UK scheme, how it sits in the legal framework, and proposals for its dissemination. The papers by Brooke (1998)and Maidment (1998)set out in detail the technical basis for the scheme.     

Automated systems can help dial up more claims dollars

Overdue outpatient bills can pile up, but the relatively small amount of money per bill makes it hard to justify a staffer's time dialing numbers all day. For more and more hospitals, the solution is an automatic dialing system.