Health Services Research articles from April 2002

Health Services Research archives from April 2002

The role of perspective. (Editorial Column).(Editorial)
April 1, 2002... CONTRASTING FINDINGS There are two nursing home-related papers in this issue, both addressing the policy shift toward prospectively paying for care. Chen and Shea (2002) argue in "Does Prospective Payment Really Contain Nursing Home...

Does prospective payment really contain nursing home costs? (Policy Impact).(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... With an aging population, American society has faced an increasing demand for nursing home care. Consequently, nursing home expenditures have increased significantly from $20 billion in 1980 to more than $87 billion in 1998 (Levit, Cowan,...

Who switches from Medigap to Medicare HMOs? (Other Articles).(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... The number of Medicare beneficiaries who have chosen to enroll in capitated managed care plans has greatly increased in recent years. In 1992, just 4 percent were in risk-contract plans, but by 1998, this has more than tripled to 14.1 percent...

Strategies for reporting health plan performance information to consumers: evidence from controlled studies.(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... Increasing the use of quality information by consumers making health plan choices is a principal goal in the dissemination of performance report cards. A rationale for providing quality information to consumers is to ensure that plans do not...

Mental health costs and access under alternative capitation systems in Colorado.(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... To contain costs and manage utilization, public mental health systems across the country are rapidly implementing capitation payment systems and managed care policies. At least 32 states are in some stage of designing and implementing...

Two-year outcomes of fee-for-service and capitated Medicaid programs for people with severe mental illness.
April 1, 2002... State mental health authorities have increasingly adopted capitated payment systems for Medicaid recipients. By doing so, states hope to provide incentives for cost-effective treatment by shifting some degree of financial risk for the delivery...

Managing indigent care: a case study of a safety-net emergency department.
April 1, 2002... Emergency departments (EDs) of safety-net hospitals that treat a low-income population face two problems on a daily basis: social use and tenuous financing. Problematic social use arises because EDs are required to see "all people at all times...

Nursing home case-mix reimbursement in Mississippi and South Dakota.
April 1, 2002... Case-mix reimbursement has become a widely adopted method for public financing of nursing facility care. A case-mix approach serves as the basis for the new Medicare Prospective Payment System (PPS) for skilled nursing facilities. This approach...

Estimating paid and unpaid hours of personal assistance services in activities of daily living provided to adults living at home. (Research Briefs).(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... Personal assistance services (PAS) (1) with activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental ADLs (IADLs) are increasingly recognized as important for enabling many millions of individuals with disabilities of all ages to live in their own...

Is mastectomy overused? A call for an expanded research agenda.
April 1, 2002... Surgery is the cornerstone of definitive treatment for most women with breast cancer. By the mid-1980s, several randomized trials had demonstrated that lumpectomy with radiation therapy confers the same survival benefit as modified radical...

Benefit-cost analysis of addiction treatment: methodological guidelines and empirical application using the DATCAP and ASI. (Methods).(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... To reinforce standardized methods and promote consistency across studies, health economists have published several books and scientific articles on proper techniques for economic evaluation of health care programs (e.g., Drummond et al. 1997;...

A relational approach to measuring competition among hospitals.(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... Competition has been a key concept in the market-oriented U.S. health care system in the last 2 decades. Despite its critical importance, many researchers are not satisfied with the existing methods of measuring competition (Bernstein and...

Discrepancies between explicit and implicit review: physician and nurse assessments of complications and quality.(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 2002... This study compares the results of medical record reviews by nurses and physicians, aiming to identify complications and to assess quality of care. Peer Review Organizations (PROs) and researchers frequently use medical record reviews,...

Comparing oral health care utilization estimates in the United States across three nationally representative surveys.
April 1, 2002... The nation requires valid and reliable estimates of the proportion of the population with a dental visit each year for a variety of important purposes. For example, public health practitioners and legislators rely on these data to develop...