Health Services Research articles from April 2003

Health Services Research archives from April 2003

Use of information technology to improve the Quality of Health Care in the United States. (AHRQ Update).
April 1, 2003... INTRODUCTION In 1969, when the Internet was known as the DARPAnet and the World Wide Web was nothing more than a glint in a creative student's mind, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded its first project in medical...

AcademyHealth celebrates its 20th Annual Research Meeting! (AcademyHealth Update).
April 1, 2003... AcademyHealth's 20th Annual Research Meeting, June 27--June 29, 2003, in Nashville will bring together more than 2,000 researchers, policymakers, and providers to learn about cutting-edge research results, debate timely health policy issues,...

International Conference comes to the United States. (AcademyHealth Update).
April 1, 2003... Join more than 600 researchers and policymakers from all over the world for the 5th International Conference on the Scientific Basis of Health Services: Global Evidence for Local Decisions, co-hosted by AcademyHealth and the Agency for...

2003 Health Policy and politics: an orientation to decision making in Washington. (AcademyHealth Update).
April 1, 2003... AcademyHealth's 2003 Health Policy Orientation program will be held September 29 to October 2 in Washington, D.C. This program provides individuals an opportunity to learn how policy is developed and implemented in the nation's capital. There...

Learn from HSR experts anytime, anywhere. (AcademyHealth Update).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Bring health services research experts directly into your classroom or workplace with our Archived Cyber Seminars in Health Services Research. These Web-based, recorded versions of the live seminars, including Q&A and polling, are perfect for...

AcademyHealth salary survey. (AcademyHealth Update).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... From April 18 to May 9, 2002, AcademyHealth members were invited by e-mail to complete the online survey. Forty-three percent of members with valid e-mail addresses responded (1,140 people-34 percent of the total AcademyHealth membership at the...

Key resources in Health Economics. (AcademyHealth Update).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... AcademyHealth has developed a selected set of books, journals, Web sites, and bibliographic databases through the Health Economics Core Library Project (www.academyhealth.org/publications/coremodules.htm) for the National Library of Medicine....

Recent changes at Health Services Research. (Editorial Column).
April 1, 2003... Three recent changes in HSR occasion the opportunity to take a new look at our peer review process and assess the potential for the journal to add other value to the field. Some might advise "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Indeed, HSR was...

Quality improvement: getting to how.
April 1, 2003... Intense enthusiasm for public reporting of health care performance continues unabated. Dating from when Relman (1988) first observed that the third revolution in medicine was the age of accountability, the demands of multiple stakeholders,...

Market reform in New Jersey and the effect on mortality from Acute Myocardial Infarction. (Impact of Financial Policies).
April 1, 2003... Over the past decade and a half, many states have adopted market-based reforms to slow the rate of growth in health care costs (Zwanziger, Melnick, and Bamezai 2000; Dranove, Shanley, and White 1993). Although market-based reforms are becoming...

Selection incentives in a performance-based contracting system.
April 1, 2003... State and local governments are major sources of financing for substance abuse services. In 1997,27 percent of total mental health and substance abuse spending was funded by state or local governments (Mark et al. 2000). Like other payers,...

Medicare breast surgery fees and treatment received by Older Women with localized Breast Cancer.
April 1, 2003... Despite an increasing trend in the use of breast conserving surgery (B CS) to treat early-stage breast cancer (Silliman et al. 1997; Guadagnoli et al. 1998), substantial variability exists in use of BCS among older women (Nattinger et al. 1996;...

Effects of Medicaid managed care programs on health services access and use.
April 1, 2003... Through the 1990s, Medicaid managed care (MMC) grew to become the dominant form of health care delivery within Medicaid. Medicaid managed care covered 57 percent of Medicaid enrollees nationally in 2001, up from only 10 percent in 1991 (Centers...

Chronic disease medication use in managed care and indemnity insurance plans.
April 1, 2003... There is substantial concern that incentives embedded in managed care (MC) will result in compromised quality of care (Druss et al. 2000). By shifting financial risk to the providers of care, the fear is that services may be withheld or delayed...

Improving care for minorities: can quality improvement interventions improve care and outcomes for depressed minorities? Results of a randomized, controlled trial. (Mental Health Services).
April 1, 2003... Ethnic minority individuals in the United States who identify themselves as members of historically disadvantaged ethnic groups experience poorer health and premature mortality (Williams and Collins 1995; Ren and Amick 1994; Navarro 1990) when...

Does satisfaction reflect the technical quality of mental health care?
April 1, 2003... Measures of patient satisfaction with health care are widely used by insurers, providers, and researchers due to their intrinsic value as measures of consumer preference and their relative ease of measurement. Such surveys may be used to...

Patterns and correlates of contacting clergy for mental disorders in the United States.
April 1, 2003... Despite the enormous burdens imposed by mental illnesses and the availability of effective treatments, unmet need for mental health care continues to be an enormous public health problem (Kessler, Olfson, and Berglund 1998; Olfson et al. 1998;...

Economic expansion is a major determinant of physician supply and utilization. (Other Research Articles).
April 1, 2003... Through much of the twentieth century, planners searched for tools that could aid them in defining the future need for physicians. Lacking better means, most adopted normative standards based on experiences in European countries or in areas of...

Callers' ability to understand advice received from a telephone health-line service: comparison of self-reported and registered data.
April 1, 2003... The use of telephone technology to deliver 24-hour, out-of-hours or after discharge health care advice is growing in many countries. Such services usually offer advice and information on which health care provider to contact and the urgency...

How do patients choose physicians? Evidence from a national survey of enrollees in employment-related health plans.
April 1, 2003... There is growing awareness of consumer and patient choices and their large impact on the ultimate cost and outcomes of health service use. This can occur directly through decisions to seek care, to comply with prescribed treatment regimens, or...

Health care costs among smokers, former smokers, and never smokers in an HMO.
April 1, 2003... Various studies demonstrate that smoking results in greater health care costs (Hodgson 1992; Miller et al. 1998; Bartlett et al. 1994; Pronk et al. 1999; Zhang et al. 1999; Miller, Ernst, and Coffin 1999) that may account for 6-8 percent of...

Developing and testing a model to predict outcomes of organizational change. (Methods).
April 1, 2003... This paper describes the development of a short survey instrument and the creation of a companion Bayesian model that uses the survey data to predict the potential for successful implementation of a health system change and to explain...