In any healthcare institution, the most important people are patients and their families [1]. These people benefit from the services of the institution, pay for these services either directly or indirectly through third-party payers, and hence affect the marketing of the institution through expressions of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with the services. They also form a customer base for re...

The payment policy for United States physicians was formerly based on determination of customary and prevailing charges from their fee schedules. Rapidly growing health care expenditures in the 1980s led to a fundamental change in payment reimbursement in which the new system was based on the resource costs to the physician for providing health care services. This reform highlights the signific...

BACKGROUND Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can cause severe infection in patients who are undergoing vascular surgical operations. Testing all vascular surgery patients preoperatively for MRSA and attempting to decolonize those who have positive results may be a strategy to prevent MRSA infection. The economic value of such a strategy has not yet been determined. METHODS We...

OBJECTIVE To compare cost-effectiveness of three types of infant transport models (Emergency Medical Technicians [EMT], Registered Nurses [RN], or Combined Teams [CT] of RNs and Respiratory Therapists) and to derive a decision model to guide choice of a transport system. RESEARCH DESIGN A prospective, multicenter, observational study was conducted to compare infant physiologic status before a...

For some time, sociologists have debated whether physicians still retain dominance in the health care world, public faith in their moral and scientific authority, and the autonomy to set work conditions and make clinical decisions. Using ideas derived from this debate, we analyze the impact of changes in the health care environment on physician satisfaction. Our data come from a mailed survey o...

Claims data have become common during the past two decades. The electronic records include information entered on bills (claims) submitted by healthcare providers to third-party payers. They are an attractive data source; however, they contain limitations that threaten the validity of studies that use them. We reviewed 168 studies that employed claims data, published during 2000-2005 in five he...

Recent interest in voters' anti-incumbent sentiments focuses on generational change as well as public weariness with partisan control of a long duration. Theories on the electoral effects of such behaviors predict partisan cycles that suggest rising hazards of party incumbency. This article provides an analytical framework for examining changes and durations of party control in presidential ele...