Health Services Research articles from October 2006

Health Services Research archives from October 2006

New policy on disclosures at Health Services Research.(New Policy at HSR)(studies relating to tobacco use)
October 1, 2006... The appropriate role of scientific journals is to disseminate the best science available to the public and the research community. Two principal mechanisms to fulfill this role are peer review and open disclosure of potential biases in...

HSR authorship responsibility, disclosures, and acknowledgment.(New Policy at HSR)
October 1, 2006... General instructions: Each author must read and sign the statements on: (1) Authorship responsibility, criteria, and contributions, (2) Financial disclosures, and (3) Other disclosures, as well as the separate form for (A)...

Will choice-based reform work for Medicare? Evidence from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.(Health Insurance)(health maintenance organization)
October 1, 2006... Over the past several decades, the Medicare program has experimented with providing Medicare beneficiaries health plan choices through its managed care program. As a result of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act...

Crowd-in: the effect of private health insurance markets on the demand for Medicaid.(Health Insurance)(health care coverage for workers)
October 1, 2006... As eligibility for public health insurance expands, individuals may drop private insurance coverage and switch to public insurance. This problem, known as crowd-out, has been a key issue in debates regarding the expansion of Medicaid to women...

How much risk pooling is there in the individual insurance market?(Health Insurance)
October 1, 2006... The potential for adverse selection is a key factor in the individual insurance market where enrollment is voluntary and people have an incentive to purchase coverage when they expect to have health care needs. Insurers in this market try to...

Cost-sharing for emergency care and unfavorable clinical events: findings from the safety and financial ramifications of ED copayments study.(Health Insurance)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
October 1, 2006... Patients in the United States are paying more for their health care, in part through additional or higher copayments. This increased cost-sharing could improve efficiency if patients reduce unnecessary use of resources, but also could result in...

Restrictions on provider access in health plans and socioeconomic status.(Health Insurance)
October 1, 2006... Historically, the market for health insurance consisted mostly of indemnity (INDM) plans that paid some fraction of the fees charged by providers for medical services. Such plans, typically known as fee-for-service or, more appropriately, INDM...

Agency and market area factors affecting home health agency supply changes.(Balanced Budget Act of 1997)
October 1, 2006... The Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 mandated the development of a Medicare prospective payment system (PPS) for reimbursing home health agencies (HHAs) and the immediate implementation of an interim payment system (IPS) to contain the rapid...

Impact of alternative interventions on changes in generic dispensing rates.(Factors Affecting Supply and Use of Services)
October 1, 2006... Because a generic drug "is a chemical copy of a brand-name drug" where the "biggest difference between a generic drug and its brand name counterpart is usually the price" (Center for Drug Evaluation and Research 2004), increasing the use of...

Effects of family structure on children's use of ambulatory visits and prescription medications.(Factors Affecting Supply and Use of Services)
October 1, 2006... For three decades after the 1960s, the percentage of U.S. children under the age of 18 living in single-parent households, particularly single-mother households, increased steadily (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Although this trend stabilized in...

Practice characteristics associated with patient-specific receipt of dental diagnostic radiographs.
October 1, 2006... Research on the influence that health care providers have on the variation in health care service receipt suggests several possible mechanisms by which this variation can occur (Wilensky and Rossiter 1983; Eisenberg 1985; Westert and...

Aggregation and the measurement of health care costs.(Methods)
October 1, 2006... Studies of health care cost at the national level routinely demonstrate that cost rises with increases in per capita income. Belgium spends more on medical care than Bangladesh because it is a wealthier country. The causality is so obvious that...

Commentary on Getzen's "aggregation and the measurement of health care costs".(Methods)
October 1, 2006... In this issue, Thomas Getzen usefully reminds us that we have to know the question we want answered before we talk about the right answer. In particular, the answer(s) to the question of the principal determinants of medical care spending are...

Provider attitudes toward pay-for-performance programs: development and validation of a measurement instrument.(Methods)
October 1, 2006... During the past 5 years, an increasing number of health plans and self-insured employers have instituted financial incentive programs as a strategy for motivating health care providers to improve quality of care. Under these programs, known as...

Implementing the Institute of Medicine definition of disparities: an application to mental health care.(Methods)
October 1, 2006... In health care, the term "disparities" refers to the unequal treatment of patients on the basis of race or ethnicity, and sometimes on the basis of gender or other patient characteristics. A consensus has emerged that eliminating disparities...

Addressing measurement error bias in nurse staffing research.
October 1, 2006... The past decade has witnessed the publication of a number of studies examining the relationship between hospital registered nurse (RN) staffing and quality of care (American Nurses Association 1997, 2000; Kovner and Gergen 1998; Lichtig, Knauf,...