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Nurse navigators (NNs) coordinate patient care, improve care quality and potentially reduce healthcare resource use. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an evaluation of hospitalisation outcomes in a new NN programme in Queensland, Australia.

A matched case-control study was performed. Patients under the care of the NNs were randomly selected (n=100) and were matched to historical (n=300) and concurrent (n=300) comparison groups. The key outcomes of interest were the number and types of hospitalisations, length of hospital stay and number of intensive care unit days. Generalised linear and two-part models were used to determine significant differences in resources across groups.

The control and NN groups were well matched on socio-economic characteristics, however, groups differed by major disease type and number/type of comorbidities. NN patients had high healthcare needs with 53 per cent having two comorbidities. In adjusted analyses, compared with the control groups, NN patients showed higher proportions of preventable hospitalisations over 12 months, similar days in intensive care and a smaller proportion had overnight stays in hospital. However, the NN patients had significantly more hospitalisations (mean: 6.0 for NN cases, 3.4 for historical group and 3.2 for concurrent group); and emergency visits.

As many factors will affect hospitalisation rates beyond whether patients receive NN care, further research and longer follow-up is required.

A matched case-control study provides a reasonable but insufficient design to compare the NN and non-NN exposed patient outcomes.

Sponsorship's ability to help a company achieve its corporate and marketing objectives has enabled the communication tool to climb to the top of a marketer's promotional consideration set. This paper sets out to review the industry's current understanding of sponsorship as a promotional mechanism. As the medium's underlying principles are identified, marketing practitioners are provided with examples and strategic guidelines so that they are able to maximise their sponsorship investments.

The purpose of the paper is to explore how the national, state and organisational health policies in Australia support the implementation of person-centred care in managing chronic care conditions.

A qualitative content analysis was performed regarding the national, state and organisational Queensland Health policies using Elo and Kyngas' (2008) framework.

Although the person-centred care as an approach is well articulated in health policies, there is still no definitive measure or approach to embedding it into operational services. Complex funding structures and competing priorities of the governments and the health organisations carry the risk that person-centred care as an approach gets lost in translation. Three themes emerged: the patient versus the government; health care delivery versus the political agenda; and health care organisational processes versus the patient.

Given that person-centred care is the recommended approach for responding to chronic health conditions, further empirical research is required to evaluate how programs designed to deliver person-centred care achieve that objective in practice.

This research highlights the complex environment in which the person-centred approach is implemented. Short-term programmes created specifically to focus on person-centred care require the right organisational infrastructure, support and direction. This review demonstrates the need for alignment of policies related to chronic disease management at the broader organisational level.

Given the introduction of the nurse navigator program to take up a person-centred care approach, the review of the recent policies was undertaken to understand how they support this initiative.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. In Italy, acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a major cause of hospitalization and healthcare costs. AMI is a myocardial necrosis event caused by an unstable ischemic syndrome. The Italian government has defined an indicator called “AMI: 30-day mortality” to assess the quality of the overall care pathway of the heart attacked patient. In order to guarantee high standards, all hospitals had to implement techniques to increase the quality of care pathway. The aim of the paper is to identify the root cause and understand the mortality rate for AMI and redesign the patient management process in order to improve it.

A Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach was used in this study to analyze the patient flow in order to reduce 30-days mortality rate from AMI registered by Complex Operative Unit (COU) of Cardiology of an Italian hospital. Value stream mapping (VSM) and Ishikawa diagrams were implemented as tools of analysis.

Process improvement using LSS methodology made it possible to reduce the overall times from 115 minutes to 75 minutes, with a reduction of 35%. In addition, the corrective actions such as the activation of a post-discharge outpatient clinic and telephone contacts allowed the 30-day mortality rate to be lowered from 16% before the project to 8% after the project. In this way, the limit value set by the Italian government was reached.

The limitation of the study is that it is single-centered and was applied to a facility with a limited number of cases.

The LSS approach has brought significant benefits to the process of managing patients with AMI. Corrective actions such as the activation of an effective shared protocol or telephone interview with checklist can become the gold standard in reducing mortality. The limitation of the study is that it is single-centered and was applied to a facility with a limited number of cases.

LSS, applied for the first time to the management of cardiovascular diseases in Italy, is a methodology which has proved to be strategic for the improvement of healthcare process. The simple solutions implemented could serve as a guide for other hospitals to pursue the national AMI mortality target.

In public health and sustainable transport campaigns, walking is positioned as an important way families can become more active, fit and spend quality time together. However, few studies specifically examine how family members move together on-foot and how this is constitutive of individual and collective familial identities. Combining the notion of a feminist ethics of care with assemblage thinking, the chapter offers the notion of the familial walking assemblage as a way to consider the careful doing of motherhood, childhood and family on-foot. Looking at the walking experiences of mothers and children living in the regional city of Wollongong, Australia, the chapter explores how the provisioning and enactment of care is deeply embedded in the becoming of family on-the-move. The chapter considers interrelated moments of care – becoming prepared, together, watchful, playful, ‘grown up’ and frustrated – where mothers and children make sense of and enact their familial subjectivities. It is through these moments that the family as a performative becoming, that is always in motion, becomes visible. The chapter aims to provide further insights into the embodied experience of walking for families in order to better inform campaigns which encourage walking.