Asthma guidelines: who is guiding whom and where to?

Who is holding whom accountable for quality?

The debate over accountability for managed care quality is occurring everywhere, from Congress and state legislatures to courtrooms and boardrooms. This paper reviews a variety of today's techniques for holding managed care answerable for quality, ranging from those grounded in the law to more market-based approaches, including accreditation and commerce in data about plan performance. Today, t...

Prokaryotes Versus Eukaryotes: Who is Hosting Whom?

Microorganisms represent the largest component of biodiversity in our world. For millions of years, prokaryotic microorganisms have functioned as a major selective force shaping eukaryotic evolution. Microbes that live inside and on animals outnumber the animals' actual somatic and germ cells by an estimated 10-fold. Collectively, the intestinal microbiome represents a "forgotten organ," functi...

Asthma: where is it going?

Asthma is characterized by reversible airway obstruction, airway hyperresponsiveness, and airway inflammation. Although our understanding of its pathophysiological mechanisms continues to evolve, the relative contributions of airway hyperresponsiveness and inflammation are still debated. The first mechanism identified as important for asthma was bronchial hyperresponsiveness. In a second step, ...

Who Marries Whom and Why

This paper proposes and estimates a static non-parametric transferable utility model of the marriage market. The model rationalizes the standard interpretation of marriage rate regressions as well as pointing out its limitations. The model was used to estimate US marital behavior in 1971/72 and 1981/82. The estimates show that the gains to marriage for young adults fell substantially over the d...

Where is Patient Safety Research and Practice Heading? A Response to Recent Commentaries