Health Services Research articles from June 2009

Health Services Research archives from June 2009

Filling the gaps between performance incentive programs and health care quality improvement.(Editorial)
June 1, 2009... Restructuring payment policies through performance incentive programs to explicitly promote improvements in the quality and value of health care has become a popular strategy for public and private health care payers. But our measures of...

A systematic review of health care efficiency measures.(Health Care Efficiency)(Report)
June 1, 2009... Rising health care costs are driving increases in health insurance premiums, the erosion of private coverage (Chernew, Cutler, and Keenan 2005), and strains on the fiscal solvency of public insurance programs (Boards of Trustees of the Federal...

Commentary: a systematic review of health care efficiency measures.(DEBATE/COMMENTARY)
June 1, 2009... Frustration with high costs and poor quality in American health care led private sector purchasers of health care benefits to form our organization, The Leapfrog Group, in 2000. Purchasers use Leapfrog to translate and then deploy the most...

Commentary: slack resources in health care organizations--fat to be trimmed or muscle to be exercised?(DEBATE/COMMENTARY)
June 1, 2009... In this issue, Hussey et al. (2009) at RAND summarize their results of a systematic review of ways to identify and evaluate health care efficiency. Their approach was deliberately broadly inclusive in that they did not require that the studies...

Effects of the Premier hospital quality incentive demonstration on Medicare patient mortality and cost.(Quality and Performance)(Report)
June 1, 2009... A solution proposed to address the quality and cost problems plaguing health care in the United States is pay-for-performance (P4P), where health care organizations and physicians are compensated not only for what they do, but whether their...

Managed care quality of care and plan choice in New York SCHIP.(Quality and Performance)
June 1, 2009... During the last two decades, enrollment in managed care plans has increased from 27 percent of the employees with employer-based insurance coverage in 1988 to 97 percent in 2007 (Kaiser Family Foundation 2007). The rise in managed care has...

The relationship between hospital volume and mortality in mechanical ventilation: an instrumental variable analysis.(Quality and Performance)(Report)
June 1, 2009... Increased case load is associated with improved outcomes in many areas of health care, including trauma, acute myocardial infarction, and many types of high-risk surgeries (Halm, Lee, and Chassin 2002). Recent studies have documented a...

Organizational and market influences on physician performance on patient experience measures.(Quality and Performance)(Survey)
June 1, 2009... Patient experience surveys have become central to performance measurement activities nationwide, including pay-for-performance and public reporting initiatives (Cleary 1999; Damberg et al. 2005). Little is known about the extent to which...

Retention, learning by doing, and performance in emergency medical services.(Quality and Performance)
June 1, 2009... While there is considerable evidence in the case of hospitals and surgeons that high volume is associated with better patient outcomes across a variety of medical conditions (Luft, Hunt, and Maerki 1987; Tu, Austin, and Chan 2001; Birkmeyer et...

The health effects of Medicare for the near-elderly uninsured.(Medicare and Medicaid)
June 1, 2009... While 25 percent of Americans in the 55-64 age group experience gaps in health insurance coverage (Baker and Sudano 2005), starting at age 65 virtually all Americans have affordable, comprehensive health insurance coverage through the Medicare...

Insurance disruption due to spousal Medicare transitions: implications for access to care and health care utilization for women approaching age 65.(Medicare and Medicaid)(Survey)
June 1, 2009... Health insurance plays a critical role in health care use among near-elderly adults (ages 55-64). People approaching the age of Medicare eligibility are more likely to experience illnesses requiring medical care (Brennan 2000; Holahan 2004;...

An examination of the Medicaid undercount in the current population survey: preliminary results from record linking.(Medicare and Medicaid)
June 1, 2009... Survey estimates of public program enrollment are substantially lower than estimates of program enrollment compiled from administrative data for Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Food Stamps (C. Taeuber, D. Resnick, S....

Impact of pharmacy benefit design on prescription drug utilization: a fixed effects analysis of plan sponsor data.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Report)
June 1, 2009... In 2007, approximately 3.81 billion prescriptions were dispensed in the United States (IMS Health 2008), and the associated pharmacy costs accounted for 10.1 percent of the nearly $2 trillion in national health care expenditures (KFF/HRET...

Effect of an expenditure cap on low-income seniors' drug use and spending in a state pharmacy assistance program.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Report)
June 1, 2009... A spending cap is an insurance design feature that changes out-of-pocket prices faced by the insured after she exceeds a spending limit. Often the cap is a coverage limit, so that plan enrollees must pay full price after their spending has...

The within-year concentration of medical care: implications for family out-of-pocket expenditure burdens.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Survey)
June 1, 2009... A growing literature examines the out-of-pocket medical spending of U.S. families, showing the distribution of high or "catastrophic" burdens over time and across subgroups. (1) Evidence on burdens can help inform policies to reduce uninsurance...

Health care utilization and costs associated with physical and nonphysical-only intimate partner violence.(Utilization and Expenditures)(Report)
June 1, 2009... Physical and nonphysical types of intimate partner violence (IPV) are common in women, with lifetime prevalence ranging from 17 to 34 percent for physical IPV, and 12 to 35 percent for nonphysical abuse (e.g., verbal threats; chronic...

Preferences, beliefs, and self-management of diabetes.(Chronic Illness and Nursing Homes)(Report)
June 1, 2009... Diabetes mellitus (DM) prevalence is rising (Mokdad et al. 2000; Bagust et al. 2001). Adherence of diabetes patients to recommended care can markedly reduce complication rates. In the U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS), fight blood glucose...

Factors associated with increasing nursing home closures.(Chronic Illness and Nursing Homes)
June 1, 2009... Since the implementation of the Medicaid program in 1965, nursing homes have been the predominant institutional providers of long-term care. However, in recent years, there has been growth in alternative sources of long-term care, such as...