Health Services Research back issues from December 2007:
Effect of critical access hospital conversion on patient safety.(Hospitals)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The Institute of Medicine (IOM) definition of patient safety is "freedom from accidental injury due to medical care, or medical errors" (Kohn, Corrigan, and Donaldson 1999). More than 44,000 Americans die as a result of preventable medical errors each year and national costs of preventable ...
Using performance data to identify preferred hospitals.(Hospitals)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Employers and health plans are experimenting with a variety of market-based approaches to improve the value of health care spending. Many have adopted or are contemplating benefit designs with tiered provider networks that differentiate point-of-service copayments based on the cost and ...
Differences in the implementation of diagnosis-related groups across clinical departments: a German hospital case study.(Hospitals)(Author abstract)(Case study)
Dec 01, 2007; ... In 2000, a National Health Care Reform was passed in Germany which included the implementation of a Prospective Payment System for 100 percent of the inpatient cases. The new finance system is based on diagnosis-related groups (DRGs), a patient classification system which originated in the ...
Patient outcomes and evidence-based medicine in a preferred provider organization setting: a six-year evaluation of a physician pay-for-performance program.(Quality and Outcomes)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Within the past decade, several Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports have recommended quality-based incentive programs as effective tools to improve quality of care (Kohn, Corrigan, and Donaldson 2000; IOM 2001; Corrigan, Eden, and Smith 2002). In response, many health plans, as well as the ...
Does quality improvement work? Evaluation of the organ donation breakthrough collaborative.(Quality and Outcomes)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Every year there are thousands of decedents who could donate organs but do not (Sheehy et al. 2003). Many families of potential donors refuse consent, others are never asked in the first place. According to a recent estimate, the number of life years lost as a result of the failure to ...
The cost-effectiveness of improving diabetes care in U.S. federally qualified community health centers.(Quality and Outcomes)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Deficiencies in the quality of care of chronic conditions such as diabetes are well recognized as a major public health problem (Committee on Quality of Health Care in America 2001; McGlynn et al. 2003). Concerns regarding these deficiencies have led to significant public investment in ...
The role of product design in consumers' choices in the individual insurance market.(Health Insurance)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The growing numbers of uninsured and rising health care costs continue to plague health policy makers. Among solutions to this problem are policies to make health insurance more affordable for those who lack group health insurance and policies to promote new health insurance products that ...
Commentary: what is the right price in discrete choice models of health plan choice?(Health Insurance)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The paper by Marquis et al. (2007) makes a contribution to the literature on health plan choice in the nongroup market, a topic that is likely to be of continuing interest for health policy debates in the United States. However, the authors have made an error in specifying the model they ...
Commentary: what is the right price of health insurance? A rejoinder.(Health Insurance)
Dec 01, 2007; ... In his commentary on our article "The Role of Product Design in Consumers' Choices in the Individual Insurance Market," Dr. Feldman asserts that our analysis of decisions to elect insurance may be biased by our use of a premium price adjusted for the actuarial value (1)--which he ...
Mortality and physician supply: does region hold the key to the paradox?(Physician Supply)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Recently there has been a series of research reports that have described positive associations between the supply of primary care physicians and health outcomes (Shi 1992, 1994; Forrest and Starfield 1996; Shi et al. 2003a, b, 2005; Starfield et al. 2005; Starfield, Shi, and Macinko 2005) ....
Commentary: primary care and health outcomes: a health services research challenge.(Physician Supply)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The contributions of primary care to improvements in many aspects of population and individual health are well documented (Starfield, Shi, and Macinko 2005). In addition to the health benefits, there are reductions in health system costs and reductions in disparities in health across ...
Triangulating patient and clinician perspectives on clinically important differences in health-related quality of life among patients with heart disease.(Methods Articles)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The reliance on multiple measurement strategies in health services research is motivated by the widely held belief that "the most persuasive evidence comes through a triangulation of measurement processes, as well as through minimizing the error contained in each instrument" (Bowling 2002, ...
Pediatric patient safety events during hospitalization: approaches to accounting for institution-level effects.(Methods Articles)(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... There have been an increasing number of descriptive analyses of pediatric medical errors as the release of the Institute of Medicine reports over 5 years ago (IOM 2000, 2001, 2004). These include single and multi-institution studies, studies of medication errors, and several broad ...
Panel discussion: health information technology and return on investment: fact or fantasy? (1).(Academy Health Panel Reports)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Moderator: Murray N. Ross, Ph.D., Director of Health Policy Analysis and Research, Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, Oakland, CA. Panelists: Douglas A. Conrad, Ph.D., Professor, Health Services; Professor, Dental Public Health Sciences; Adjunct Professor, Finance ...
Panel discussion: knowing what you are paying for: benefit design in a changing market (1).(Academy Health Panel Reports)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Introduction: The health insurance market is changing rapidly and there are concerns about rising costs, quality, and value, and the financial burden and distribution of costs among different groups. The question is: Who should pay? Recently, there has been a rise in ...
Correction to "Cost Shifting to Jails After a Change to Managed Mental Health Care.".(Erratum)(Correction notice)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The statistical program to create estimates for the paper entitled "Cost Shifting To Jails After A Change To Managed Mental Health Care" (Domino et al. 2004) contained a typo in the inflation adjustment for year 1994 data, making the pre-managed care spending by King County Mental Health ...
Editorial.
Dec 01, 2007; ... As evidenced by the popular response to the call for papers for this special issue on State Health Research and Policy, there is an abundance of state-level research being conducted across the country. The response to our call was overwhelming, with more than 160 submitted abstracts and 40 ...
Assessing the value of the NHIS for studying changes in state coverage policies: the case of New York.(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Lack of health insurance is a persistent problem in the U.S. health care system, with little consensus as to how to increase coverage (IOM 2004). As a result, states continue to explore alternative strategies that rely on both expansions of public programs and incentives to increase ...
Assessing potential enrollment and budgetary effects of SCHIP premiums: findings from Arizona and Kentucky.(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... BACKGROUND Premiums have become a prominent feature of public health insuranceprograms for children in recent years. This trend started in the late 1990s when many states that adopted separate non-Medicaid programs required premium payments from some income groups as ...
Agreement between self-reported and administrative race and ethnicity data among Medicaid enrollees in Minnesota.(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Racial and ethnic disparities in health care and health outcomes are major concerns for government agencies, academic researchers, and health care practitioners. Addressing such disparities is a central goal of Healthy People 2010 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2000) ....
Estimating health conditions for small areas: asthma symptom prevalence for state legislative districts.(Author abstract)(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Asthma is a national and state health concern that has generated much research and policy activity. In California, an estimated 3.9 million children and adults, 11.9 percent of the state's population, reported that they had been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their lives (Meng et ...
Discontinuity of coverage for Medicaid and S-CHIP children at a transitional birthday.(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... The State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) was created in 1997 to expand health insurance to uninsured low-income children. States have great latitude in designing and administering their programs. Fifteen states have opted to integrate their S-CHIP programs into the existing ...
Implications of the Medicaid undercount in a high-penetration Medicaid state.(Author abstract)(Survey)
Dec 01, 2007; ... Scholars and state health administrators have long noted differences in administrative enrollment records and survey-based estimates of Medicaid populations. In Louisiana, the 2005 Current Population Survey estimates Medicaid enrollments for children (under 19 years old) at 35 percent or ...
Inpatient hospital utilization among the uninsured near elderly: data and policy implications for West Virginia.(Report)
Dec 01, 2007; ... This paper examines the health insurance status and inpatient hospital utilization of the near elderly within the state of West Virginia (WV). The near elderly (defined here as 50-64 year olds) have been identified by health policy researchers and practitioners within the United States as ...