Recently added articles from Health Services Research:
Filling the gaps between performance incentive programs and health care quality improvement.(Editorial)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Restructuring payment policies through performance incentive programs to explicitly promote improvements in the quality and value of health care has become a popular strategy for public and private health care payers. But our measures of quality are less than comprehensive, and current ...
A systematic review of health care efficiency measures.(Health Care Efficiency)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Rising health care costs are driving increases in health insurance premiums, the erosion of private coverage (Chernew, Cutler, and Keenan 2005), and strains on the fiscal solvency of public insurance programs (Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary ...
Commentary: a systematic review of health care efficiency measures.(DEBATE/COMMENTARY)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Frustration with high costs and poor quality in American health care led private sector purchasers of health care benefits to form our organization, The Leapfrog Group, in 2000. Purchasers use Leapfrog to translate and then deploy the most important evidence about the levers that improve ...
Commentary: slack resources in health care organizations--fat to be trimmed or muscle to be exercised?(DEBATE/COMMENTARY)
Jun 01, 2009; ... In this issue, Hussey et al. (2009) at RAND summarize their results of a systematic review of ways to identify and evaluate health care efficiency. Their approach was deliberately broadly inclusive in that they did not require that the studies reviewed simultaneously measure quality as ...
Effects of the Premier hospital quality incentive demonstration on Medicare patient mortality and cost.(Quality and Performance)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... A solution proposed to address the quality and cost problems plaguing health care in the United States is pay-for-performance (P4P), where health care organizations and physicians are compensated not only for what they do, but whether their actions conform to quality standards or result in ...
Managed care quality of care and plan choice in New York SCHIP.(Quality and Performance)
Jun 01, 2009; ... During the last two decades, enrollment in managed care plans has increased from 27 percent of the employees with employer-based insurance coverage in 1988 to 97 percent in 2007 (Kaiser Family Foundation 2007). The rise in managed care has heightened the importance of measuring and ...
The relationship between hospital volume and mortality in mechanical ventilation: an instrumental variable analysis.(Quality and Performance)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Increased case load is associated with improved outcomes in many areas of health care, including trauma, acute myocardial infarction, and many types of high-risk surgeries (Halm, Lee, and Chassin 2002). Recent studies have documented a relationship between volume and outcome in critical ...
Organizational and market influences on physician performance on patient experience measures.(Quality and Performance)(Survey)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Patient experience surveys have become central to performance measurement activities nationwide, including pay-for-performance and public reporting initiatives (Cleary 1999; Damberg et al. 2005). Little is known about the extent to which characteristics and activities of medical groups and ...
Retention, learning by doing, and performance in emergency medical services.(Quality and Performance)
Jun 01, 2009; ... While there is considerable evidence in the case of hospitals and surgeons that high volume is associated with better patient outcomes across a variety of medical conditions (Luft, Hunt, and Maerki 1987; Tu, Austin, and Chan 2001; Birkmeyer et al. 2002, 2003; Halm, Lee, and Chassin 2002; ...
The health effects of Medicare for the near-elderly uninsured.(Medicare and Medicaid)
Jun 01, 2009; ... While 25 percent of Americans in the 55-64 age group experience gaps in health insurance coverage (Baker and Sudano 2005), starting at age 65 virtually all Americans have affordable, comprehensive health insurance coverage through the Medicare program. By reducing the out-of-pocket costs ...
Insurance disruption due to spousal Medicare transitions: implications for access to care and health care utilization for women approaching age 65.(Medicare and Medicaid)(Survey)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Health insurance plays a critical role in health care use among near-elderly adults (ages 55-64). People approaching the age of Medicare eligibility are more likely to experience illnesses requiring medical care (Brennan 2000; Holahan 2004; McWilliams et al. 2004) and face increased ...
An examination of the Medicaid undercount in the current population survey: preliminary results from record linking.(Medicare and Medicaid)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Survey estimates of public program enrollment are substantially lower than estimates of program enrollment compiled from administrative data for Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Food Stamps (C. Taeuber, D. Resnick, S. Love, J. Staveley, P. Wilde, and R. Larson, ...
Impact of pharmacy benefit design on prescription drug utilization: a fixed effects analysis of plan sponsor data.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... In 2007, approximately 3.81 billion prescriptions were dispensed in the United States (IMS Health 2008), and the associated pharmacy costs accounted for 10.1 percent of the nearly $2 trillion in national health care expenditures (KFF/HRET 2007). Between 1994 and 2003, prescription drug ...
Effect of an expenditure cap on low-income seniors' drug use and spending in a state pharmacy assistance program.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... A spending cap is an insurance design feature that changes out-of-pocket prices faced by the insured after she exceeds a spending limit. Often the cap is a coverage limit, so that plan enrollees must pay full price after their spending has reached a specified level. Studies examining the ...
The within-year concentration of medical care: implications for family out-of-pocket expenditure burdens.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Survey)
Jun 01, 2009; ... A growing literature examines the out-of-pocket medical spending of U.S. families, showing the distribution of high or "catastrophic" burdens over time and across subgroups. (1) Evidence on burdens can help inform policies to reduce uninsurance and can aid in the design of public and ...
Health care utilization and costs associated with physical and nonphysical-only intimate partner violence.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Physical and nonphysical types of intimate partner violence (IPV) are common in women, with lifetime prevalence ranging from 17 to 34 percent for physical IPV, and 12 to 35 percent for nonphysical abuse (e.g., verbal threats; chronic controlling behavior; Coker et al. 2002; Thompson et al ....
Preferences, beliefs, and self-management of diabetes.(Chronic Illness and Nursing Homes)(Report)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Diabetes mellitus (DM) prevalence is rising (Mokdad et al. 2000; Bagust et al. 2001). Adherence of diabetes patients to recommended care can markedly reduce complication rates. In the U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS), fight blood glucose control and biannual monitoring lowered the ...
Factors associated with increasing nursing home closures.(Chronic Illness and Nursing Homes)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Since the implementation of the Medicaid program in 1965, nursing homes have been the predominant institutional providers of long-term care. However, in recent years, there has been growth in alternative sources of long-term care, such as assisted living and home care services (Hawes et ...
Setting the stage for the second decade of the era of patient safety: contributions by the agency for healthcare research and quality and grantees.(Editorial)
Apr 01, 2009; ... This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) To Err Is Human report that focused the health care community and the public on the inherent risks that patients face when they seek care. Importantly, the message made it clear that many adverse consequences were ...
Evaluation of the AHRQ patient safety initiative: framework and approach.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
Apr 01, 2009; ... In January 2000, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published the report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, which stimulated national efforts to improve the safety of the U.S. health care system (IOM 2000). In FY 2001, the U.S. Congress identified patient safety as a national ...