Article: An integer programming model to limit hospital selection in studies with repeated sampling.

Health services research studies frequently involve the review of medical records at a number of hospitals. With increased emphasis on outcomes research, such studies are likely to become more common. Unless performed by organizations like peer review organizations (PROs) as part of legally mandated review activities, record reviews require hospital approval, which can be difficult and time-consuming to obtain. Further, if reviews are done at the hospital, the expense of sending reviewers to a large number of geographically dispersed hospitals can be high, and the logistics of coordinating activities with many different medical record departments daunting. For these reasons, ...