Health Services Research articles from August 2007

Health Services Research archives from August 2007

Lessons from SCHIP.(Editorial)(State Children Health Insurance Program)
August 1, 2007... This Fall marks the 10th anniversary of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The program, a component of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, expanded health insurance coverage to low-income children. Today, SCHIP covers over 6.5...

Do increases in patient activation result in improved self-management behaviors?(Self-Management And Health Care Utilization)
August 1, 2007... The Patient Activation Measure (PAM), which assesses patient knowledge, skill, and confidence for self-management, was developed using qualitative methods, Rasch analysis, and classical test theory psychometric methods. The resulting measure is...

The effect of immediate reading of screening mammograms on medical care utilization and costs after false-positive mammograms.(Self-Management and Health Care Utilization)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Mammography is an imperfect test, and false-positive mammograms, where the mammogram is read as abnormal in a woman who does not have breast cancer, happen frequently. On average, in the United States, about 10 percent of mammograms are read as...

The relationship between work hours and utilization of general practitioners in four Canadian provinces.(Self-Management and Health Care Utilization)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... In Canada's publicly funded health care system, policy is governed by the Canada Health Act whose primary objective is to "protect, promote, and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and to facilitate reasonable...

Utilizing new prescription drugs: disparities among non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Hispanic whites.(Self-Management and Health Care Utilization)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Race and ethnicity have been shown to be associated with medical diagnosis and treatment (Mayberry, Mili, and Ofili 2000). The contemporary medical literature uses "race" as a social construct because previous research has accumulated evidence...

The impacts of the State Children's Health Insurance Program on children who enroll: findings from ten states.(Health Insurance)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was created in 1997 primarily to expand insurance coverage to more low-income children. States had latitude over numerous aspects of their program design and ultimately all states expanded...

Effects of the State Children's Health Insurance Program on access to dental care and use of dental services.(Health Insurance)(Author abstract)
August 1, 2007... Lack of dental insurance is one of the main barriers affecting access to dental services (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2000). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. government gradually increased eligibility for public...

The impact of welfare reform on insurance coverage before pregnancy and the timing of prenatal care initiation.(Health Insurance)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Despite recent improvements in many maternal and infant health indicators, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality continue to be public health problems in the United States. Throughout most of this century, policymakers have endorsed...

Do hospitals provide lower quality care on weekends?(Quality of Care and Mortality)(Author abstract)(Clinical report)
August 1, 2007... The fact that patients admitted to the hospital on a weekend are more likely to die than patients admitted to the hospital on a weekday has stimulated renewed debate over the role of regulation versus incentives in enhancing the quality of...

Is thirty-day hospital mortality really lower for black veterans compared with white veterans?(Quality of Care and Mortality)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... In contrast to an extensive literature documenting worse health outcomes among blacks than whites throughout the health care system (Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2002), a number of studies of veterans hospitalized in the Veterans Affairs (VA)...

Reduced mortality: the unexpected impact of a telephone-based care management intervention for older adults in managed care.(Quality of Care and Mortality)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... About 125 million Americans live with one or more chronic conditions, a number that is expected to increase dramatically over the next several decades (Anderson and Horvath 2002). Among people aged 65 and older, most health care spending (96...

Hospitalization of nursing home residents: the effects of States' Medicaid payment and bed-hold policies.(Nursing Home and Hospice)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Hospitalization of nursing home residents is prevalent throughout the U.S., but varies considerably both within and between states (Intrator and Mor 2004; Intrator, Zinn, and Mor 2004). Over 15 percent of long-stay nursing home residents are...

Hospice care: what services do patients and their families receive?(Nursing Home and Hospice)(health care management)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Three-quarters of individuals who die in the United States do so from chronic illnesses (Minino et al. 2002), often after suffering both physically and psychologically for months or years (The SUPPORT Principal Investigators 1995). Recent...

Examining the scope of multibusiness health care firms: implications for strategy and financial performance.(Methods Articles)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Over the past several decades, large, complex multibusiness health care firms, more commonly known as organized or integrated delivery systems, have formed primarily through related horizontal and vertical scope expansions across the health...

Overestimating outcome rates: statistical estimation when reliability is suboptimal.(Methods Articles)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Measurement error is an inescapable part of scientific inquiry. The conventional wisdom is that random measurement error in an outcome (i.e., the dependent variable) does not affect your point estimates but only the standard errors and thus,...

The adequacy of household survey data for evaluating the nongroup health insurance market.(Methods Articles)(Survey)
August 1, 2007... The individual or nongroup health insurance market has played a prominent role in recent policy discussions seeking ways to improve the efficiency and equity with which health insurance is obtained in the United States (Pauly and Percy 2000;...

Qualitative data analysis for health services research: developing taxonomy, themes, and theory.(Methods Articles)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Qualitative research is increasingly common in health services research (Shortell 1999; Sofaer 1999). Qualitative studies have been used, for example, to study culture change (Marshall et al. 2003; Craigie and Hobbs 2004), physician-patient...

Notes from the field: jumpstarting the IRB approval process in multicenter studies.(Methods Article)(Author abstract)(Report)
August 1, 2007... In early 2004, we were selected to head the National Program Office (B.S., M.R.) and evaluation component (J.B., J.B.) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's "Expecting Success" (ES) program. The program applies quality improvement techniques...

Administrative data algorithms can describe ambulatory physician utilization.(Methods Article)(health care industry.)
August 1, 2007... The care of chronic diseases encompasses a growing part of the health care system. Because of increasing accountability requirements and fiscal restraints, it is becoming ever more important to establish the most effective and efficient ways of...