Health Services Research articles from April 2009

Health Services Research archives from April 2009

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)
April 1, 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...

Evaluation of the AHRQ patient safety initiative: framework and approach.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
April 1, 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....

Assessment of contributions to patient safety knowledge by the agency for healthcare research and quality-funded patient safety projects.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)
April 1, 2009... BACKGROUND One of the central activities of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) patient safety initiative has been the use of its appropriated funding to support research and development work to expand knowledge on...

Experiences of agency for healthcare research and quality-funded projects that implemented practices for safer patient care.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)
April 1, 2009... BACKGROUND In 2002, the U.S. Congress gave the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) the mandate to lead federal patient safety improvement activities. In response, AHRQ formulated a strategy with an explicit commitment to...

Adopting information technology to drive improvements in patient safety: lessons from the agency for healthcare research and quality health information technology grantees.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... In its report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (2000), the Institute of Medicine (IOM) called upon the health care community and policy makers to build a safer health care system, and it recommended use of innovative health...

Training a patient safety work force: the patient safety improvement corps.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... The Patient Safety Improvement Corps (PSIC) is a nationwide training program that is a key component of the patient safety initiative operated by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The goal of the PSIC is to increase the...

The growth of partnerships to support patient safety practice adoption.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... BACKGROUND Since the publication of the Institute of Medicine's landmark report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (Institute of Medicine 2000), national and local efforts have been mobilized to transform the U.S. health care...

Safety outcomes in the United States: trends and challenges in measurement.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... One of the key components of any effort to track national trends in patient safety involves measuring patient outcomes. Ultimately, outcomes at the clinical level can be understood as the occurrence of adverse events that cause harm to...

Evaluation of the AHRQ patient safety initiative: synthesis of findings.(PATIENT SAFETY EVALUATION SPECIAL ISSUE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... Stimulated in large part by the publication in January 2000 of the Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human." Building a Safer Health System, the U.S. Congress established patient safety as a national priority in FY 2001 and gave AHRQ the...

Help move research into policy and practice at the 2009 Annual Research Meeting (ARM).(Academy Health Update)
April 1, 2009... The ARM offers a rich and exciting slate of invited and peer-reviewed research sessions, methods training workshops, and networking opportunities. With a record 1,882 abstract submissions making up 50 percent of the program agenda, the 2009 ARM...

Interest group meetings offer in-depth discussion and skill-building.(Academy Health Update)
April 1, 2009... AcademyHealth's Interest Groups provide a forum for members to share information, network with their peers, and learn more about a topic. The following groups will be hosting meetings in conjunction with the ARM in Chicago. To register, visit...

AcademyHealth recognizes influential research with 2009 HSR Impact Award.(Academy Health Update)
April 1, 2009... AcademyHealth recognized research demonstrating the benefits of an innovative approach to providing home-based personal assistance to Medicaid beneficiaries with the 2009 HSR Impact Award. The Cash and Counseling Demonstration research was...

Looking for a professional home?(Academy Health Update)(AcademyHealth)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... AcademyHealth is the professional home for health services researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners, and the leading, nonpartisan resources for the best in health services research and policy. Drawing from the strengths of more than...

Covering the uninsured as a quality improvement strategy.(Editorial)(Report)
April 1, 2009... Health care reform is back on the nation's political agenda. For those of us who have been working on health policy for some time, it feels like deja vu all over again. Many aspects of reform--like the problems of how to cover uninsured...

Roundtable on expanding capacity for comparative effectiveness research in the United States: discussion took place on June 3, 2007, at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Orlando, FL.(AcademyHeath Roundtable Panels)(Conference news)
April 1, 2009... Facilitator Sean Tunis, M.D., MSc., Director, The Center for Medical Technology Policy, a small nonprofit firm; formerly, at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Panel Members * Carolyn Clancy, M.D., Director, Agency...

Academy Health Annual Research Meeting 2007: roundtable on achieving national quality measurement & reporting progress & prospects June 5, 2007.(PANEL DISCUSSION)(Discussion)
April 1, 2009... Facilitator * Eric Schneider, M.D., M.Sc., Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. Panel Members *...

Impact of public reporting on unreported quality of care.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)
April 1, 2009... Public reporting of quality information is a potentially powerful tool to improve health care quality. Moving quality information into the public domain may improve quality of care by giving consumers the information necessary to choose...

Relationship of safety climate and safety performance in hospitals.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)
April 1, 2009... Despite substantial efforts by many health care organizations, medical errors remain too common and continue to generate significant personal and financial burdens (Institute of Medicine 2006). Researchers who study organizations that face...

Impact of performance obstacles on intensive care nurses' workload, perceived quality and safety of care, and quality of working life.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)
April 1, 2009... A major challenge for intensive care units (ICUs) is improving quality and safety of nursing care. For example, a recent study found that there was one error for every five medication doses administered in a medical-surgical ICU. The medication...

Time to send the preemie home? Additional maturity at discharge and subsequent health care costs and outcomes.(Hospital Services and Outcomes)(Report)
April 1, 2009... The expression "you can't rush mother nature" is certainly true when considering the discharge of infants from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). An infant born 2 or 3 months premature may often spend an equivalent time or more in the...

Anesthesia provider model, hospital resources, and maternal outcomes.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)
April 1, 2009... The impact of anesthesia provider credentials on patient outcomes has been a research topic and the subject of policy debates for more than 40 years (Kane and Smith 2004). Although some studies have indicated that credentials (anesthesiologist...

Certificate of Need (CON) for cardiac care: controversy over the contributions of CON.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... Policy makers and providers seek to insure provision of high-quality health care while restraining cost growth. Many states pursue these two goals by enforcing Certificate of Need (CON) regulations, which require hospitals to obtain approval...

Effects of survey mode, patient mix, and nonresponse on CAHPS[R] hospital survey scores.(Methods)
April 1, 2009... The CAHPS[R] (Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Providers and Systems) Hospital Survey (also known as Hospital CAHPS[R] or HCAHPS) is a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology to measure and publicly report patients'...

Use of prolonged travel to improve pediatric risk-adjustment models.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... Methods to assess the quality of care delivered by hospitals have grown in importance with monitoring by state agencies (Hannan et al. 1997) and the growth of pay-for-performance plans (Glickman et al. 2007; Profit et al. 2007). Most of these...

Adjusting for subgroup differences in extreme response tendency in ratings of health care: impact on disparity estimates.(RESEARCH ARTICLE)(Survey)
April 1, 2009... Reducing disparities in health and health care by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) is a significant health policy goal; accurate measurement of these disparities is a critical first step (Institute of Medicine 2002; National...

Enhancement of identifying cancer specialists through the linkage of Medicare claims to additional sources of physician specialty.(METHODS ARTICLE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... An understanding of variations in the delivery and outcomes of clinical care by physician specialty can be used to target education and interventions to the most relevant professional societies and training programs. The assessment of these...

Method to develop health care peer groups for quality and financial comparisons across hospitals.(METHODS ARTICLE)(Report)
April 1, 2009... Measuring and reporting health care facility performance via clinical measures of quality has become a major strategic initiative in improving the quality of care for Medicare and other health care payers and delivery systems (e.g., Centers for...

The American Community Survey and health insurance coverage estimates: possibilities and challenges for health policy researchers.(Methods and Research Briefs)
April 1, 2009... The American Community Survey (ACS) is poised to evolve from an unknown entity among the health service research community to one of the most critical data sources for state and local health insurance coverage policy researchers over the next...

Variation in drug prices at pharmacies: are prices higher in poorer areas?(RESEARCH BRIEF)(Report)
April 1, 2009... Prescription drug prices are a significant barrier to appropriate medication use. Cost-related underuse in the uninsured is common, and even small increases in drug prices can dramatically affect medication adherence among the poor (Steinman,...