摘要:

One of the first case management (CM) programs for limiting Medicaid enrollees' freedom of choice of provider was established by Utah. By assigning enrollees to specific providers responsible for arranging all nonemergency care, Utah intended both to improve access and to reduce program costs. State officials expected the program to increase recipients' use of primary-care providers, while reducing their use of specialists, prescription drugs, and hospital outpatient services. Savings from reductions in unnecessary use were expected to more than offset increases in outlays arising from access enhancements, resulting in lower program expenditures. This study investigated the extent to which the state Medicaid program achieved these goals. The analysis was based on a two-part multivariate model of usage, estimated from data created from claims-level information provided by Utah. The findings revealed that the use of primary-care physician services increased significantly. However, the program also raised the use of specialists' services and prescription drugs. In contrast, the use of hospital outpatient services was lowered. Overall, CM apparently achieved the objective of increased access, but failed to attain the cost-containment goal. The findings indicated that expected costs for ambulatory care rose by 25% in the early years as a result of case management.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

This article introduces a neonatal classification based on latent class analysis. The neonatal classification generates five distinct classes ranging from the normal-birth-weight, full-term, healthy baby to the low-birth-weight preterm infant with many life-threatening problems. Unlike several suggested neonatal classifications, latent class analysis accommodates the range and severity of illness typically encountered in neonatal populations. It also provides a classification based solely on the personal characteristics of the newborn that can be used to investigate variation in the use of neonatal services.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Hospital use in the US is concentrated in the approximately 2% of the population that is repeatedly hospitalized. Using the research integration technique of information synthesis, empirical studies of readmission were assembled and analyzed to determine the demographic and clinical characteristics of the repeatedly hospitalized adult. The authors' synthesis of articles that met preset criteria of relevance and validity indicated that clinical variables show a more consistent association with readmission than demographic variables. Diagnosis, prior use, and disability appear to be strong predictors of an individual's level of hospital use. Demographic variables with consistent positive associations with readmission include being widowed, living with relatives other than a spouse, decreasing income, living in the South, and living in an urban area, but available work does not indicate whether these demographic variables are independent predictors of readmission or merely markers of an increased prevalence of chronic disease. Findings indicate that future investigations of the predictors of this costly pattern of hospital use will be most illuminating if illness-related factors such as diagnosis, disease severity, functional status, and usage history are carefully specified and examined.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Patients achieve better outcomes at hospitals that treat larger numbers of patients with certain diagnoses or who are undergoing particular procedures. However, the causal direction underlying this relationship is less well understood. Do patients treated at institutions with higher volumes of patients achieve better outcomes because the hospital staff and physicians have gained expertise by practice (the “practice makes perfect” hypothesis)? Do hospitals with a community reputation for excellent results attract higher volumes of patients because primary care physicians refer patients to specialists who practice there (the “selective referral” hypothesis)? Or, are both explanations important? This article addresses this question through a detailed analysis of patients with a particular diagnosis: hip fracture. In addition, two measures of patient outcomes are compared: long hospital stays as a proxy for in-hospital complications and in-hospital death.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Concerns about the insensitivity of Medicare's diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) to illness severity heightened interest in the potential of alternative patient classification systems to improve the fairness of hospital reimbursement. This article examines the ability of admission MedisGroups™ score to explain the costs of hospital stays. The database contained 54,112 patients 65 years or older discharged in 28 high-frequency DRGs from 1984 to the middle of 1986 from 24 hospitals across the country. Admission MedisGroups score alone explained 3% of costs using trimmed data. Addition of admission Medis- Groups score to DRGs modestly improved ability to predict differences in cost: for trimmed data, DRGs alone explained 52% of the variation in costs, compared with 55% when admission MedisGroups score was added. Within individual DRGs, the explanatory power of admission MedisGroups score ranged from 0% to 21%. The level of explanatory power was not related to the spread of cases across admission MedisGroups scores within DRG. No consistent clinical pattern explained these differences across DRGs.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

To determine whether a community-wide experiment in hospital prospective payment adversely affected quality of care, availability and outcomes of care were studied in Rochester, NY from 1980 to 1984. During this 5-year period, prospective payment contained hospital expenditures in a community that was already below the national average in health-care costs. Access to necessary care was maintained, and there were increased admissions for management of maternal illness and acute myocardial infarction. Rates of inpatient elective surgery declined. Outcomes of care remained stable, including neonatal deaths, ischemic heart disease deaths, deaths from five selected surgical conditions, and rates of adverse outcomes from sentinel medical and surgical conditions. These results indicated that prospective payment programs in which incentives to decrease marginal or unneeded care are linked with a community-wide effort to plan for the delivery of services can be financially and clinically successful.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

This study tested the hypothesis that increasing the intensity of outpatient care for patients discharged from the hospital could lower their subsequent inpatient and total health-care costs. At discharge, 1,001 patients were stratified by risk of readmission (low, medium, or high) and randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Discharge information (summaries, medications, and postdischarge needs) was provided to outpatient nurses who monitored intervention patients closely and attempted to resolve their problems. Intervention patients also received appointment reminders, and missed visits were promptly rescheduled. The cost of the intervention was $5.20 per patient per month. High-risk patients in the intervention group had significantly higher outpatient costs ($131/month vs. $107/month;P=0.02), but lower inpatient costs ($535/month vs. $800/month;P=0.02) than high-risk patients in the control group. Reduced inpatient costs in the high-risk intervention group were attributed to shorter, less intensive hospital stays. In conclusion, increasing ambulatory care resources after hospital discharge for high-risk patients may reduce health-care costs associated with readmission to the hospital.

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID

ISSN:0025-7079    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1988

数据来源: OVID