Health Services Research articles from June 2005

Health Services Research archives from June 2005

AHRQ update.
June 1, 2005... In the October 2004 issue of this journal, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Update traced the evolution of evidence-based medicine at the AHRQ. We described how the research we fund is driven by the needs of its users. A...

Health care reform and health services research: what once was old is new again, and again.(Editorial Column)
June 1, 2005... Congress, in passing the 2003 Health Care that Works for All Americans Act, created a 15 member Citizens' Health Care Working Group to try to improve our health care system and its financing, in order to better meet the needs of the entire...

Profit-seeking, corporate control, and the trustworthiness of health care organizations: assessments of health plan performance by their affiliated physicians.(Health Care Organizations and Their Environments)
June 1, 2005... Over the past decade, interest has burgeoned in the role of trust in the health care system. Between 1980 and 1995, 764 articles in the medical and health services literatures referred to trust or trustworthiness. Between 1995 and midyear 2003,...

Impacts of managed care patient protection laws on health services utilization and patient satisfaction with care.(Health Care Organizations and Their Environments)
June 1, 2005... During the 1990s, both patients and health care providers voiced increasing dissatisfaction with managed care. Such dissatisfaction has been documented empirically (Blendon et al. 1998; Lake 1999/2000; Kemper et al. 1999/2000; Dudley and Luft...

Commentary--assessing the impact of managed care patient protection laws: problems and pitfalls.(Health Care Organizations and Their Environments)
June 1, 2005... In their article "Impacts of Managed Care Patient Protection Laws on Health Services Utilization and Patient Satisfaction with Care," Sloan, Rattliff, and Hall use data from three rounds (1996-1997, 1998-1999, and 2000-2001) of the Community...

Characteristics of medical practices in three developed managed care markets.(Health Care Organizations and Their Environments)
June 1, 2005... Medical practices and other provider organizations serve a variety of functions (Landon, Wilson, and Cleary 1998; Rosenthal, Landon, and Huskamp 2001). These include the sharing of financial risk, the management of physician behavior, cost...

Welfare reform and health insurance of immigrants.(Medicaid and Welfare Reform)
June 1, 2005... The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) changed legal immigrants' access to public health insurance in two ways: directly, by denying Medicaid benefits to immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after August...

The effect of Medicaid payment generosity on access and use among beneficiaries.(Medicaid and Welfare Reform)
June 1, 2005... Many state Medicaid policies can influence beneficiaries' access and use. Once enrolled, beneficiaries' approach to seeking care and their ability to get needed care will likely be related, among other factors, to state decisions about managed...

Satisfaction with surgery outcomes and the decision process in a population-based sample of women with breast cancer.(Patient Care and Decisions)
June 1, 2005... The majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer are clinically eligible for two surgical treatment approaches: mastectomy or lumpectomy (also referred to as breast conserving surgery [BCS]). It is well-established that mastectomy and BCS...

Commentary--surgical decisions after breast cancer: can patients be too involved in decision making?(Patient Care and Decisions)
June 1, 2005... In this month's Health Services Research Lantz Janz, and Fagerlin et al. explore patient satisfaction with decisions about surgical treatments for early stage breast cancer among a population-based sample of women. Deciding whether to undergo...

Health services for women in outpatient substance abuse treatment.(Patient Care and Decisions)
June 1, 2005... There is growing recognition that the transfer of substance abuse treatment technology from the research community to practice has lagged (Institute of Medicine [IOM] 1998; Brown and Flynn 2002). Such a gap is particularly acute for treatment...

Do seniors understand their risk of moving to a nursing home?(Patient Care and Decisions)
June 1, 2005... How to best provide long-term care services for the aging U.S. population is one of the most difficult public policy challenges of the twenty-first century (Feder, Komisar, and Niefeld 2000). Nursing home care is a subset of long-term care, (1)...

Not of one mind: mental models of clinical practice guidelines in the Veterans Health Administration.
June 1, 2005... Health systems are focusing major resources to improve the quality of health care delivery and to create improvements that are rapid, measurable, and sustainable (Committee on Quality of Health Care in America 2001). Clinical practice...

Just-in-time evidence-based e-mail "reminders" in home health care: impact on nurse practices.(Using Guidelines and Reminders)(electronic mail)
June 1, 2005... The difficulty of translating research findings into sustainable improvements in care practices and clinical outcomes is well documented (Grimshaw and Russell 1993; Woolf et al. 1999; AHRQ 2001; Grimshaw et al. 2001; Grol 2001; Gross et al....

Just-in-time evidence-based e-mail "reminders" in home health care: impact on patient outcomes.(Using Guidelines and Reminders)
June 1, 2005... Translating research into health care practice is a complex, challenging process aimed ultimately at yielding improvements in patient outcomes. Most of the literature in the field has focused on efforts to increase the use of clinical...

The performance of administrative and self-reported measures for risk adjustment of veterans affairs expenditures.(Methods)
June 1, 2005... Various approaches have been taken in observational and experimental studies to reduce differences among patient samples that may inherently be at differential risk. Risk adjustment has also been used in an attempt to reduce biases in...

Imputation of SF-12 health scores for respondents with partially missing data.(Methods)
June 1, 2005... The SF-12 health survey encompasses all eight SF-36 scales (physical function, role-physical, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional and mental health) and can be administered in 2-3 minutes (Ware et al. 1993;...

Survival strategies for Michigan's health care safety net providers.(Methods)
June 1, 2005... The U.S. health care safety net periodically comes under scrutiny because of concerns that the organizations comprising the safety net may not survive declining resources, political threats, or the increasing demand for services resulting from...

Commentary--the history and contradictions of the health care safety net.(Methods)
June 1, 2005... What is the health-care safety net in the United States, why is it necessary, how did it arise, and what is its future? In this issue, Jacobson, Dalton, and Berson-Grand (2005) present a picture, within one state, of the current challenges...