title: Reliability assessment of home health care services.
abstract: In this paper, a model of reliability assessment of services in Home Health Care Delivery is presented. Reliability is an important quality dimension for services and is included in non-functional requirements of a system. A stochastic Markov model for reliability assessment is applied to patient communication services, in the field of home health care delivery. The methodology includes the specification of scenarios, the definition of failures in scenarios as well as the application of the analytical model. The results of the methodology reveal the critical states of the Home Health Care System and recommendations for improvement of the services are proposed. The model gives valuable results in predicting service reliability and, independently of the error types, it can be applied to all fields of Regional Health Network (RHN).
authors.affiliation: Lab of Medical Informatics, The Medical School, Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia, Greece. spirou@med.auth.gr
authors.forename: Stergiani
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Spyrou
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bamidis
authors.forename: Vassilis
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kilintzis
authors.forename: Irini
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lekka
authors.forename: Nicos
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Maglaveras
authors.forename: Costas
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pappas
mesh_terms: D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000628:therapy; D004868:Equipment Failure; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000628:therapy; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008390:Markov Chains; D009765:Obesity / Q000628:therapy; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D011336:Probability; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000592:standards*