Health Services Research articles from December 2001

Health Services Research archives from December 2001

Editorial column.(Editorial)
December 1, 2001... This special memorial issue of Health Services Research draws together outstanding papers presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy in honor of the late Alice Hersh, founding Director of...

A broader vision.(Health policy )
December 1, 2001... I have three daughters, Katie, 14, Becca, 12, and Elicia, 8. They are truly delightful. They are healthy and sturdy and swimming in the throes of life. As a family I wish that we could freeze frame the time. But we cannot, and even if we could,...

Being uninsured in 1996 compared to 1987: how has the experience of the uninsured changed over time?
December 1, 2001... Objective. To explore trends in the nonelderly uninsured population between 1987 and 1996 and examine whether the broad disparities in medical care utilization and out-of-pocket spending between the privately insured and uninsured populations...

Effects of a statewide carve out on spending and access to substance abuse treatment in Massachusetts, 1992 to 1996.
December 1, 2001... Objective. We studied the first four years of the statewide carve out for Medicaid enrollees in Massachusetts to assess its effect on access and spending. Data Source/Study Design. Using administrative data, we compared the state's fiscal years...

Family income and crowd out among children enrolled in Massachusetts children's Medical Security Plan.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To assess whether participation in a state publicly financed health insurance program, Massachusetts Children's Medical Security Plan (CMSP), which is open to children regardless of income, was associated with disenrollment from...

Racial disparity, primary care, and specialty referral.
December 1, 2001... Objective. The study examines the role of primary care physicians (PCP) in reducing racial disparities in referral-sensitive admissions. Data Sources/Study Setting. The study examined hospital discharges of New York residents in the age...

Racial/ethnic inequities in continuity and site of care: location, location, location.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To examine how continuity of care with the same provider varies by race/ ethnicity and by site of care. Data Sources/Study Selling. Secondary data analyses of the 1996-97 Community Tracking Study household survey, a...

Functional health outcomes as a measure of health care quality for medicare beneficiaries.
December 1, 2001... Objective. The Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS), a new quality measure in the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set, is designed to assess physical and mental functional health outcomes of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in...

Patient safety indicators: using administrative data to identify potential patient safety concerns.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To develop Patient Safety Indicators (PSI) to identify potential in-hospital patient safety problems for the propose of quality improvement. Data Source/Study Design. The data source was 2,400,000 discharge records in the 1997...

Health plan decision making in the medicare population: results from a national randomized experiment.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To examine the effect of providing the Medicare & You handbook on consumers' attitudes and behavior regarding health plan decision making. Data Source. A national sample of 3,738 Medicare beneficiaries who were surveyed in late...

Can it be done? Implementing adolescent clinical preventive services.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To evaluate the implementation of an intervention to increase the delivery of adolescent preventive services within a large managed care organization. Target health areas were tobacco, alcohol, sexual behavior, mad safety (seat belt...

Physician practice volume and alternative surgical treatment for breast cancer in Florida.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To determine whether surgeon procedure volume is related to the selection of a surgical option (mastectomy versus breast-conserving surgery) for breast cancer treatment. Study Selling/Study Design. Secondary data sources were used to...

Measuring population health risks using inpatient diagnoses and outpatient pharmacy data.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To examine and evaluate models that use inpatient encounter dam and outpatient pharmacy claims dam to predict future health care expenditures. Data Source/Study Design. The study group was the privately insured under-65...

Finding future high-cost cases: comparing prior cost versus diagnosis-based methods.
December 1, 2001... Objective. To examine the value of two kinds of patient-level data (cost and diagnoses) for identifying a very small subgroup of a general population with high future costs that may be mitigated with medical management. Data Sources. The...

Racial and ethnic disparities and primary care experience. (Editorial Column).(Column)
December 1, 2001... Multiple studies published in the past decade have confirmed the existence of significant disparities in access, quality, and outcomes of care associated with race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position. The majority of studies have examined...

The prevalence and correlates of untreated serious mental illness. (Articles).(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... Unmet need for treatment among those with the most serious and debilitating forms of mental illness is a growing concern for mental health services researchers in part because of dramatic recent changes in social welfare policy and mental...

Closing gaps in mental health care for persons with serious mental illness. (Commentary).
December 1, 2001... Ronald Kessler and colleagues, using data from the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS), estimate that in the period from 1990 to 1992, 5.4 million people in the U.S. household population between the ages of 18 and 54 years with a serious mental...

HMO penetration, competition, and risk-adjusted hospital mortality. (Articles).(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... Quality of care provided by HMOs is of major concern to the public and its representatives who are charged with formulating health care policy. Recently these concerns have translated into legislative initiatives at both the federal and state...

Medical care expenditures under gatekeeper and point-of-service arrangements.(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... Traditional health maintenance organizations (HMOs) use a variety of mechanisms for controlling utilization and expenditures, including selective contracting, sharing of financial risk with providers, and utilization review (Gold, Hurley, Lake,...

Do patient assessments of primary care differ by patient ethnicity?(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... For the past three decades policymakers have emphasized the need to strengthen primary care as a means of providing affordable, quality health care to all Americans (Wright 1993; Franks, Nutting, and Clancy 1993; Council on Graduate Medical...

Pennsylvania's early discharge legislation: effect on maternity and infant lengths of stay and hospital charges in Philadelphia.
December 1, 2001... The average maternity length of stay (LOS) in the hospital in the United States increased from 2.1 days in 1995 to 2.4 days in 1997 following dramatic decreases during the preceding two decades (CDC 1995). The reversal of the national trend...

Constructs of burden of illness in older patients with breast cancer: a comparison of measurement methods. (Methods).(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... The burden of illness can affect disease management and treatment decisions (Ballard-Barbash, Potosky, Harlan, et al. 1996; Desch, Penberthy, Newschaffer, et al. 1996), health outcomes (Albertsen, Fryback, Storer, et al. 1996; Satariano and...

A global measure of physical functioning: psychometric properties. (Research Brief).(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... Health status measures are often separated into generic measures designed to assess health across a variety of populations and patients and measures designed to assess the health of a particular population with a particular condition. These...