sioners approved a final set of standardized performance measures for the Disease-Specific Care Advanced Certifica tion in Heart Failure program. The measures for this program, which address both inpatient and outpatient settings for hospitals, were developed to better evaluate the care provided to heart failure patients with an emphasis on the transitions of care across care settings—specifica...

The effectiveness and efficiency of outpatient geriatric evaluation and management (GEM) was compared to usual outpatient primary care (UPC). Although GEM had no overall impact on health care utilization or cost of care for the entire study period, significant reductions were found during the sixteen- to twenty-four-month study period, suggesting a possible investment effect. In the first eight...

BACKGROUND Outpatient care facilities provide a variety of basic healthcare services to individuals who do not require hospitalisation or institutionalisation, and are usually the patient's first contact. The provision of outpatient care contributes to immediate and large gains in health status, and a large portion of total health expenditure goes to outpatient healthcare services. Payment meth...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW This article summarizes an approach to evaluating dizziness for the general neurologist and reviews common and important causes of dizziness and vertigo. RECENT FINDINGS Improved methods of diagnosing patients with vertigo and dizziness have been evolving, including additional diagnostic criteria and characterization of some common conditions that cause dizziness (eg, vestib...

Presented in this article are data related to hospital outpatient services provided for aged and disabled Medicare beneficiaries during calendar year 1987. Trend data are also presented for selected calendar years 1974-87. Hospital outpatient covered charges and Medicare program payments (in total and per enrollee) are the statistics employed to measure the use of hospital outpatient services. ...

The dramatic and continuous increase in health care spending threatens the economic stability and safety of the countries. Therefore, the governments and the health care organizations are forced to rethink and redesign their strategies in order to provide timely and cost effective healthcare services. Within this perspective, today’s technological developments have drawn attention of decision m...

An increasing number of infants in the United States are born prematurely, with current statistics estimating about 13 percent of all births. Although survival rates and outcomes for premature infants have dramatically improved in recent decades, morbidity and mortality are still significant. Infants born prematurely are at increased risk of growth problems, developmental delays, and complex me...

We examined the use patterns and costs of care for a validated stroke cohort (n = 172) from 13 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers 1 year poststroke. Decision Support System (DSS) cost and use data (inpatient and outpatient) are profiled. We provide preliminary information about the costs associated with inpatient and outpatient care and explore the relationship between the cost...

To evaluate the impact of race on mental health care utilization among older patients within given clinical psychiatric diagnoses, the authors examined a retrospective sample of 23,718 elderly veterans treated in Department of Veterans Affairs inpatient facilities in 1994. Significant racial differences in mental health care utilization found over a subsequent 2-year period were related to outp...