February 08, 2010
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| Trends and costs of overtime among nurses in Canada - Health Policy |
| Drebit S et al. – Efforts to lighten the burden of overtime should be focused at the department level. Creating more full time positions out of overtime hours may be one solution to alleviate this burden of overtime and to assuage the nursing shortage in Canada.... |
February 05, 2010
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| Economic Grand Rounds: Did Medicare Part D Improve Access to Medications - Psychiatric Services |
| Domino ME et al. – Nationally representative 2004–2006 data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey were used. Two large classes of psychotropic medications (antidepressant and antipsychotic medications) and two large classes of nonpsychotropic medications (lipid–lowering and antihypertensive agents) were examined to determine whether changes in prescription patterns occurred as a result of the implementation of Part D. There was no strong evidence that Part D was associated with large changes in access to medications in the four classes of medications examined here.... |
February 04, 2010
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| The relationship between safety net activities and hospital financial performance - BMC Health Services Research |
| Zwanziger J et al. – Despite potentially negative policy and market changes during the 1990s, safety net activities do not appear to have imperiled the survival of hospitals. There may, however, be concerns about the long–term quality of the services for hospitals serving low socioeconomic population.... |
February 03, 2010
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| 2011 Budget Bumps IT Funding - HealthDataManagement |
| President Obama's Health and Human Services budget request for fiscal year 2011 allocates increased funding for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and I.T. programs under the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.... |
February 02, 2010
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| Health insurance, cost expectations, and adverse job turnover - Health Economics |
| Ellis RP et al. – Turnover rates are systematically higher in industries in which firms are less likely to offer insurance. Simulations of the offer decision capturing between–firm health–cost heterogeneity and expected turnover rates match the observed pattern across firm sizes well.... |
February 01, 2010
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| Financing of health systems to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals in low-income countries - The Lancet |
| Fryatt R et al. – The various mechanisms reviewed and finally recommended all had different characteristics, some focusing on specific problems and some on raising resources generally. Contentious issues included the potential role of the private sector, the rights–based approach to health, and the move to results–based aid. The challenges and disagreements that arose during the work of the Taskforce draw attention to the many issues facing decision makers in low–income countries. International donors and recipient governments should work together to improve the evidence base for strengthening health systems, increase long–term commitments, and improve accountability through transparent and inclusive national approaches.... |
January 29, 2010
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| Using Information on Clinical Conditions to Predict High-Cost Patients - Health Services Research |
| Fleishman JA et al. – The number of chronic conditions merits consideration in future efforts to develop expenditure prediction models. While significant, self–rated health and indicators of functioning improved prediction only slightly.... |
January 28, 2010
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| Multi-tasking, quality and pay for performance - Health Economics |
| Kaarboe O et al. – The authors assume that: the provider is (at least to some extent) altruistic; one dimension of quality is verifiable and one dimension is not verifiable; the two quality dimensions can be either substitutes or complements. Authors main result is that setting the price equal to the marginal benefit of the verifiable quality dimension can be optimal even if the two quality dimensions are substitutes.... |
January 27, 2010
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| Do the 15D scores and time trade-off (TTO) values of hospital patients own health agree - International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care |
| Honkalampi T et al. – To the extent that mean TTO valuations of patients own health are valid for QALY calculations as they at least theoretically should be, and if experience of health states to be valued counts, the 15D scores are also valid without any transformation in a large group of heterogeneous patients. However, in certain patient groups, the agreement was not as good as overall.... |
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