Health Services Research articles from December 2004

Health Services Research archives from December 2004

From information on quality to quality information.(Editorial)
December 1, 2004... Steady increases in health care expenditures have stimulated a number of contemporary trends focused on value or return on investment in health care. Interest in clarifying the outcomes or end results of health care in terms that people...

Physical and sensory functioning over time and satisfaction with care: the implications of getting better or getting worse.(living with chronic illness)
December 1, 2004... Cross-sectional surveys generally suggest that persons with disabling physical or sensory functional impairments are less satisfied with their health care than other persons (Rosenbach 1995; Rosenbach, Adamache, and Khandker 1995; Iezzoni et...

The impact of diabetes on workforce participation: results from a national household sample.(living with chronic illness)
December 1, 2004... BACKGROUND Diabetes has staggering health and economic effects. There are an estimated 16-17 million people with diabetes in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2002) and, given the aging of the population,...

Elevated depressive symptoms among caregiving grandparents.(living with chronic illness)
December 1, 2004... A striking feature of the American demographic landscape is the growth in grandparent-headed households. In 1997, 3.9 million U.S. children lived in a grandparent's home, a 76 percent increase from 1970 (Caspar and Bryson 1998)....

Effective HIV treatment and the employment of HIV+ adults.(living with chronic illness)(human immunodeficiency virus)
December 1, 2004... The vast majority of patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are adults of prime working age. Thus, effective treatments hold promise to not only improve health but also increase the work opportunities of this population....

Predicting lawsuits against nursing homes in the United States, 1997-2001.(quality of care)
December 1, 2004... Policymakers continue to grapple with the escalating growth of the elderly population in the United States. The current and predicted strains on an already resource-strapped sector of the health care system are major concerns for both...

An algorithm for the use of medicare claims data to identify women with incident breast cancer.(quality of care)
December 1, 2004... The quality of cancer care in the United States is known to be variable, and factors determining quality of cancer care have been insufficiently studied (Hewitt and Simone 1999). The development of methods for using existing databases to study...

The effect of area HMO market share on cancer screening.(quality of care)(health maintenance organizations)
December 1, 2004... In addition to influencing the care provided to the patients they cover, the activities of HMOs and other managed care organizations may also bring about changes in the structure and functioning of the health care system with broader...

Care following acute myocardial infarction in the veterans administration medical centers: a comparison with Medicare.(quality of care)
December 1, 2004... The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) operates the largest integrated medical system in the United States. In 1996 the system became available to all veterans through an act of Congress. As a result, the number of veterans treated increased...

Commentary: measuring the quality of the VA health care system.(quality of care)(veteran administration)
December 1, 2004... The Veterans Administration has a long history of measuring the quality of care it provides. In the 1970s deficiencies in care were documented and the potential for the VA to deliver high quality care was thought to be limited (National Academy...

Understanding employee awareness of health care quality information: how can employers benefit?(quality of care)
December 1, 2004... According to a recent survey sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, approximately 11 percent of every payroll dollar of U.S. businesses was spent on health care benefits in 2002 (U.S. Chamber of Commerce 2003). While price remains the...

The magnitude and nature of risk selection in employer-sponsored health plans.(risk selection and payment)
December 1, 2004... Managed care health plans currently cover about 90 percent of the people who receive employer-sponsored health insurance. The extent to which managed care plans disproportionately enroll low-risk relative to high-risk individuals has been a...

Specificity and sensitivity of claims-based algorithms for identifying members of Medicare+Choice health plans that have chronic medical conditions.(risk selection and payment)
December 1, 2004... Health services researchers, health plan administrators, and health policymakers often need to identify people with specific chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes or heart failure. For example, researchers may be interested in assessing...

Identifying and accommodating statistical outliers when setting prospective payment rates for inpatient rehabilitation facilities.(Risk Selection and Payment)
December 1, 2004... As part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the U.S. Congress mandated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implement a prospective payment system (PPS) for hospital inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRF) who care for...

America's health centers: reducing racial and ethnic disparities in perinatal care and birth outcomes.(Vulnerable Populations)
December 1, 2004... In the United States, substantial racial/ethnic disparities exist in birth outcomes. As of 2002, the infant mortality rate for blacks (13.5 per 1,000 live births) was more than 2.5 times that of whites (5.7 per 1,000), Hispanics (5.4 per...

Hospital choice of rural Medicare beneficiaries: patient, hospital attributes, and the patient-physician relationship.
December 1, 2004... For more than a decade rural hospitals have struggled to maintain fiscal viability in a market environment characterized by declining patient volume and revenues. They have not generally adopted specialized services and advanced technologies...

Global health services research: challenging the future.(Editorial)
December 1, 2004... Today health and global well-being are inextricably intertwined. Yet much of the data and research necessary to fashion good health policy is either inadequate or missing altogether. This special edition of Health Services Research testifies to...

Health service utilization in the former Soviet Union: evidence from eight countries.(cross-country comparisons)
December 1, 2004... A decade after the transition from communism, health systems in the countries that emerged from the Soviet Union have moved, at different speeds, away from the Soviet model of health care. The Soviet system sought to achieve universal, free...

Using vignettes to compare the quality of clinical care variation in economically divergent countries.(cross-country comparisons)
December 1, 2004... The variation in health status between countries is attributed to such commonly cited factors as national income, education of girls, and even political governance (World Bank 1993). Although these factors are helpful markers of population...

Impacts of informal caregiver availability on long-term care expenditures in OECD countries.(cross-country comparisons)(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
December 1, 2004... The age distribution of all developed countries, as well as many developing countries, is shifting toward older ages (Kinsella and Velkoff 2001). Declines in fertility combined with rising longevity are expected to increase the proportion of...

Assessing the efficiency of HIV prevention around the world: methods of the PANCEA Project.(global issues in public health)(Prevent AIDS: Network for Cost-Effectiveness Analysis)
December 1, 2004... There is wide agreement that an effective response to the global HIV epidemic requires very substantial resources. This consensus has been partially translated into increasing contributions to combat the epidemic (UNAIDS 2004). The need to...

Private care and public health: do vaccination and prenatal care rates differ between users of private versus public sector care in India?(global issues in public health)
December 1, 2004... Governments in developing countries such as India spend the majority of their health care budgets on direct public provision of care. Though public services are offered free of charge, most patients, including those from the lowest income...

To prevent, react, and rebuild: health research and the prevention of genocide.(global issues in public health)
December 1, 2004... Genocide, a term defined by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, is defined as a specific series of facts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religions group, including: a....

Franchising reproductive health services.(reproductive health in today's world)
December 1, 2004... Clinic franchising occurs when service delivery points contribute equity and resources of their own in exchange for the right to offer a defined set of health services of a franchiser for a perceived market advantage or to pursue a common...

The impact of a microfinance program on client perceptions of the quality of care provided by private sector midwives in Uganda.(Reproductive Health in Today's World)
December 1, 2004... In recent years, there has been considerable interest in understanding and augmenting the role of the private sector in the provision of reproductive health services in developing countries. Although there are some concerns, due the absence of...

Cost convergence between public and for-profit hospitals under prospective payment and high competition in Taiwan.(National Lessons in Financing of Health Care)
December 1, 2004... Studies of the effects of hospital competition on patient care costs in the United States have been confounded by market segmentation on insurance status, payers, and payment type, all operating at indeterminate levels within any given "market"...

Capacity in Thai public hospitals and the production of care for poor and nonpoor patients.
December 1, 2004... Pressure to provide health care for the poor in Thailand has increased substantially since 1997. At that time, the Asian economic crisis led both to a rise in the overall number of Thais living in poverty, and to a reduction in government...

Effects of global budgeting on the distribution of dentists and use of dental care in Taiwan.
December 1, 2004... Cost-containment and equitable access to health services have been longstanding concerns among health policymakers (Carr-Hill 1994; Davis 1991; Smith and Sheldon 2000). As the demand for health care continues to grow and the financial...