In the USA, approximately 4% of the estimated 1 million Salmonella infections occurring annually are reported to public health. Administrative claims data from large health insurance companies capture disease-specific data which could potentially enhance public health surveillance. To determine the utility of medical claims data for public health reporting of Salmonella, we assessed medical cla...

Fraud is widespread and very costly to the healthcare insurance system. Fraud involves intentional deception or misrepresentation intended to result in an unauthorized benefit. It is shocking because the incidence of health insurance fraud keeps increasing every year. In order to detect and avoid the fraud, data mining techniques are applied. Frauds blow a hole in the insurance industry. Health...

BACKGROUND Simple global self-ratings of health (SRH) have become increasingly used in national and international public health monitoring, and in recent decades recommended as a standard part of health surveys. Monitoring developments in population health requires identification and use of health measures, valid in relation to targets for population health. The aim of the present study was to ...

Healthcare delivery is one of the most important functions of government. This task is, however, beset with so many difficulties in a developing country like Nigeria. The application of Information Technology (IT) is one way to overcome several of the problems besetting the sector. This work, therefore, focuses on the application of some computer-based techniques that could help to properly tar...

BACKGROUND Uncoded diagnoses in computerized health insurance claims are excluded from statistical summaries of health-related risks and other factors. The effects of these uncoded diagnoses, coded according to ICD-10 disease categories, have not been investigated to date in Japan. METHODS I obtained all computerized health insurance claims (outpatient medical care, inpatient medical care, an...

In recent years, statisticians and psychologists have provided the critique that p-values do not capture the evidence afforded by data and are, consequently, ill suited for analysis in scientific endeavors. The issue is particular salient in the assessment of the recent evidence provided for ESP by Bem (2011) in the mainstream Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Wagenmakers, Wetzels, ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of general versus specific health-benefit claims in increasing consumer purchase intentions for a widely consumed vegetable, fresh mushrooms. The results indicate that specific claims work better with well-known versus lesser-known nutrients. Also, consumers’ knowledge about a nutrient increases the effectiveness of nutrientbased health c...

The lay media, and especially the Internet, contain many misleading claims for health products which have previously been inadequately regulated by consumer law. This was an experimental interventional survey within a consumer health-care setting. Three health products were chosen on the basis of being widely available on the UK market and having no available evidence of effectiveness. Twelve v...

With a growing national emphasis in data transparency and reporting of public health data, it is essential for researchers to know more about Medicare claims data, the largest and most reliable source of health-care utilization and expenditure for individuals older than 65 years in the United States. This article provides an overview of Medicare claims data for plastic surgery outcomes research...