Health Services Research articles from February 2004

Health Services Research archives from February 2004

AHRQ's bioterrorism research portfolio: real linkages in real time.(AHRQ Update)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
February 1, 2004... Responding to a bioterrorist event calls for critical communication and linkages in real time; among systems of care, the public health infrastructure and individual clinicians, law enforcement agents and emergency responders. In particular,...

From the editors: perspectives on turnaround time.(Editorial)
February 1, 2004... Editors are frequently asked about the turnaround time at their journals, but there is no standard way this "simple" statistic is defined, making comparisons across journals somewhat risky. The easiest number for an editor to access is based on...

The challenge of studying the effects of managed care as managed care evolves.
February 1, 2004... Managed care today, for both Medicare beneficiaries and others, bears increasingly less resemblance to the managed care plans of the early 1990s (Lesser, Ginsburg, and Devers 2003). Utilization management strategies such as gatekeeping and...

The impact of visit frequency on the relationship between service quality and outpatient satisfaction: a South Korean study.(patient assessments)
February 1, 2004... The health care system in the United States has recently experienced tremendous change. For the first time, providers are facing decreased funding, increased competition, and the maturation of the entire industry (Emanuel and Dubler 1995). To...

Older persons' evaluations of health care: the effects of medical skepticism and worry about health.(patient assessments)
February 1, 2004... Consumer assessments have become an important tool for monitoring the accessibility and quality of health services. Health plans and systems routinely conduct consumer evaluations to monitor their performance and alter the delivery of care in...

Identifying children with special health care needs in the National Health Interview Survey: a new resource for policy analysis.(child health)
February 1, 2004... The ability to address the special needs of children with chronic conditions has become an important focus for providers and policymakers in the arenas of health care and education. In the changing policy environment, with recent reforms to the...

Profile of medical charges for children by health status group and severity level in a Washington State health plan.(child health)
February 1, 2004... There is considerable evidence that costs of care vary widely across medical conditions and general health status, and children with certain conditions generate higher medical costs than the average pediatric population (Newacheck and Halfon...

Do drug-free workplace programs prevent occupational injuries? Evidence from Washington State.
February 1, 2004... Substance abuse remains one of the nation's most important public health problems resulting in significant morbidity and premature mortality (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and National Institute on Drug Abuse 1998; Office...

The costs of decedents in the Medicare program: implications for payments to Medicare+Choice plans.
February 1, 2004... Medicare's payment system for health maintenance organizations (HMOs) would ideally reward plans that efficiently deliver care. In practice, however, Medicare's capitated payment system instead gives health plans and subcapitated providers...

Impact of managed care on the treatment, costs, and outcomes of fee-for-service Medicare patients with acute myocardial infarction.
February 1, 2004... The presence of managed care organizations in a health care market may affect health care delivery for both managed care and nonmanaged care patients. Through financial incentives to providers, and by more actively managing patient care than...

Are gatekeeper requirements associated with cancer screening utilization?
February 1, 2004... Although early studies of the impact of managed care on cancer screening found that screening is higher in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or managed care plans, more recent studies have had ambiguous results (Bernstein, Thompson, and...

Moving beyond the typologies of managed care: the example of health plan predictors of screening mammography.
February 1, 2004... Understanding the influence of managed care on the utilization of preventive health services has been problematic, parry because well-developed measures of health plans are not readily available. Previous studies typically used dichotomous...

Reexamining organizational configurations: an update, validation, and expansion of the taxonomy of health networks and systems.
February 1, 2004... A number of years ago a taxonomy of health networks and systems was created, using data from the mid-1990s, for the purpose of defining the structures and strategies of newly emerging health care organizations and identifying classes of health...