The growth in U.S. national health expenditures (NHE) has continuously outpaced its Gross Domestic Products (GDP) growth since 1997 and this trend will continue with a 2.1% annual gap for the next decade (RAND, 2010). This nonstop healthcare cost increase make healthcare one of the most urgent issues in USA. Concurred by this study, the key factor that drives up the healthcare costs is waste. I...

One of the perks that accompany editing The American Journal of Managed Care is that we can describe our vision for the Journal and the healthcare system from time to time. Over the past several months, not a day has passed without some criticism in the media, the US Congress, or the business community of the current US approach to healthcare delivery: millions uninsured or underinsured, safety...

Enhancing the speed and competition in an exhibition of services and products motivated the companies to provide high-quality products to the customers. One of the effective strategies to reach these goals is to create working groups. These groups can help the companies to improve the quality and exposure of their services along with reducing the costs. This approach is applicable in the health...

Antibiotic therapy has resulted in major progress in the fight against infectious diseases and is associated with an improved quality of life and increased survival. However, the emergence of resistant bacterial strains represents an inevitable consequence of antibiotic treatment and yields a loss of beneficial effects. Due to the scarce availability of new molecules in the near future, physici...

N ot so long ago, cost-of-illness studies were criticised for mainly estimating the annual costs of a disease in retrospect, without paying attention to trends in costs and the return on the investments in terms of health benefits. From the time when we began developing models that can simulate the future burden and costs of a disease, we recognised the importance of cost-of-illness studies for...

OBJECTIVE To summarise how costs and health benefits will change with the adoption of total laparoscopic hysterectomy compared to total abdominal hysterectomy for the treatment of early stage endometrial cancer. DESIGN Cost-effectiveness modelling using the information from a randomised controlled trial. PARTICIPANTS Two hypothetical modelled cohorts of 1000 individuals undergoing total lap...

BACKGROUND We sought to determine the impact of delays to admission from the Emergency Department (ED) on inpatient length of stay (LOS), and IP cost. METHODS We conducted a retrospective analysis of 13,460 adult (>or= 18 yrs) ED visits between April 1 2006 and March 30 2007 at a tertiary care teaching hospital with two ED sites in which the mode of disposition was admission to ICU, surgery o...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE No economic data from population-based studies exist on acute or late hospital, community, and indirect costs of stroke associated with atrial fibrillation (AF-stroke). Such data are essential for policy development, service planning, and cost-effectiveness analysis of new therapeutic agents. METHODS In a population-based prospective study of incident and recurrent stro...