Front-office/back-office configurations and operational performance in complex health services

Background: Acquired brain injury (ABI) occurs from various causes at different ages and leads to many different types of healthcare needs. Several Dutch ABI-networks installed a local co-ordination and contact point (CCP) which functions as a central and easily accessible service for people to consult when they have questions related to ABI. Goals: To explore the relationship between front/back office design and operational performance by investigating the particular enquiry service provided by different CCPs for people affected by an ABI. Methods: In-depth interviews with 14 FO/BO employees from three case organizations, complemented with information from desk research and three one-day field visits. Results: The CCPs applied different FO/BO configurations in terms of customer contact and in terms of grouping of front and/or back office activities into tasks for one employee. Discussion: It is the complexity of the enquiry that determines which approach is more appropriate. For complex enquiries, the level of decoupling is high in all CCPs. This allows multiple experts to be involved in the process. For regular enquiries, CCPs have a choice: either working in the same way as in the complex enquiries or coupling FO/BO activities to be able to serve clients faster and without handovers

Systematics and evolution of predatory flower flies (Diptera Syrphidae) based on exon-capture sequencing

Flower flies (Diptera: Syrphidae) are one of the most species-rich dipteran families and provide important ecosystem services such as pollination, biological control of pests, recycling of organic matter and redistributions of essential nutrients. Flower fly adults generally feed on pollen and nectar, but their larval feeding habits are strikingly diverse. In the present study, high-throughput sequencing was used to capture and enrich phylogenetically and evolutionary informative exonic regions. With the help of the baitfisher software, we developed a new bait kit (SYRPHIDAE1.0) to target 1945 CDS regions belonging to 1312 orthologous genes. This new bait kit was successfully used to exon capture the targeted loci in 121 flower fly species across the different subfamilies of Syrphidae. We analysed different amino acid and nucleotide data sets (1302 loci and 154 loci) with maximum likelihood and multispecies coalescent models. Our analyses yielded highly supported similar topologies, although the degree of the SRH (global stationarity, reversibility and homogeneity) conditions varied greatly between amino acid and nucleotide data sets. The sisterhood of subfamilies Pipizinae and Syrphinae is supported in all our analyses, confirming a common origin of taxa feeding on soft-bodied arthropods. Based on our results, we define Syrphini stat.rev. to include the genera Toxomerus and Paragus. Our divergence estimate analyses with beast inferred the origin of the Syrphidae in the Lower Cretaceous (125.5-98.5 Ma) and the diversification of predatory flower flies around the K-Pg boundary (70.61-54.4 Ma), coinciding with the rise and diversification of their prey.Peer reviewe

The impact of front-office/ back-office configurations on performance in a complex health service environment: a multiple case study

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can occur from various causes at different ages and can lead to many different types of health care needs. This makes the group of patients very diverse. Hence, many health care providers may be involved in treatment. The development of the coordination and contact points (CCP’s) over time has led to front/back office configurations that vary in the ABI networks. We address the following question: How does the front/back-office configuration of a coordination and contact point (CCP) of an ABI-network influence the performance in the process of advising ABI clients

Correlates of extinction proneness in tropical angiosperms

Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell PublishingRapid losses and degradation of natural habitats in the tropics are driving catastrophic declines and extinctions of native biotas, including angiosperms. Determining the ecological and life-history correlates of extinction proneness in tropical plant species may help reveal the mechanisms underlying their responses to habitat disturbance, and assist in the pre-emptive identification of species at risk from extinction. We determined the predictors of extinction proneness in 1884 locally extinct (n = 454) and extant (n = 1430) terrestrial angiosperms (belonging to 43 orders, 133 families, and 689 genera) in the tropical island nation of Singapore (699.4 km2), which has lost 99.6% of its primary lowland evergreen rainforest since 1819. A wide variety of traits such as geographical distribution, pollination system, sexual system, habit, habitat, height, fruit/seed dispersal mechanism, and capacity for vegetative re-sprouting were used in the analysis. Despite controlling for phylogeny (as approximated by family level classification), we found that only a small percentage of the variation in the extinction probability could be explained by these factors. Epiphytic, monoecious, and hermaphroditic species and those restricted to inland forests have higher probabilities of extinction. Species dependent on mammal pollinators also probably have higher extinction probabilities. More comparative studies that use species traits to identify extinction-prone plant species are needed to guide the enormous, but essential task of identifying species most in need of conservation action.Navjot S. Sodhi, Lian Pin Koh, Kelvin S.-H. Peh, Hugh T. W. Tan, Robin L. Chazdon, Richard T. Corlett, Tien Ming Lee, Robert K. Colwell, Barry W. Brook, Cagan H. Sekercioglu and Corey J. A. Bradsha

The impact of front-office/ back-office configurations on performance in a complex health service environment: a multiple case study

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can occur from various causes at different ages and can lead to many different types of health care needs. This makes the group of patients very diverse. Hence, many health care providers may be involved in treatment. The development of the coordination and contact points (CCP’s) over time has led to front/back office configurations that vary in the ABI networks. We address the following question: How does the front/back-office configuration of a coordination and contact point (CCP) of an ABI-network influence the performance in the process of advising ABI clients?Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can occur from various causes at different ages and can lead to many different types of health care needs. This makes the group of patients very diverse. Hence, many health care providers may be involved in treatment. The development of the coordination and contact points (CCP’s) over time has led to front/back office configurations that vary in the ABI networks. We address the following question: How does the front/back-office configuration of a coordination and contact point (CCP) of an ABI-network influence the performance in the process of advising ABI clients?C

Antigen sparing with adjuvanted inactivated polio vaccine based on Sabin strains.

Six different adjuvants, each in combination with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) produced with attenuated Sabin strains (sIPV), were evaluated for their ability to enhance virus neutralizing antibody titres (VNTs) in the rat potency model. The increase of VNTs was on average 3-, 15-, 24-fold with adjuvants after one immunization (serotypes 1, 2, and 3, respectively). Also after a boost immunization the VNTs of adjuvanted sIPV were on average another 7-20-27 times higher than after two inoculations of sIPV without adjuvant. The results indicate that it is feasible to increase the potency of inactivated polio vaccines by using adjuvants