Improving Communities, Improving Health

Abstract

When we talk about health care, we are often referring to hospitals or other acute facilities, imagining women and men in scrubs, long waits in emergency rooms, that distinctive smell of disinfectant. We “in the know” talk about checklists and ways to reduce inpatient costs; we discuss the absence or the glut of beds; and we count stats of length of stay, average daily census, and DRGs.