BACKGROUND Although funding has supported the scale up of routine, opt-out HIV testing in the US, variance in implementation mechanisms and barriers in high-burden jurisdictions remains unknown. METHODS We conducted a survey of health care organizations in Washington, DC and Houston/Harris County to determine number of HIV tests completed in 2011, policy and practices associated with HIV test...

With the increasing cost of health care and the growing constraints made by third party payers, in-hospital time for preoperative teaching is quickly being reduced. Seventy-two patients attended preoperative instruction either as an inpatient the day before surgery or as an outpatient 4-8 days before surgery. Anxiety and knowledge levels were measured before and after class and the evening befo...

M a i n c o s t a n d o u t c o m e m e a s u r e s Cost per febrile influenza-like illness (ILI) day avoided. A break-even analysis was also done to calculate the vaccine-plus-administration cost below which its use would be cost saving. Per-child cost-effectiveness analyses were done separately for an individualbased and group-based vaccination delivery scenario from the societal and third-pa...

The emergence of the Tea Party movement in 2009 witnessed the surfacing of a populist, anti-Obama libertarian mobilisation within the United States. The Tea Party, a movement which brought together a number of disparate groups, some new, some established, utilized participation branding where the consumer attributed the movement its own identity and brand. Its consumer facing approach, lack of ...

Generic medicines are a key strategy used by governments and third-party payers to contain medicines costs and improve the access to essential medicines. This strategy represents an important opportunity provided by the global intellectual property regimes to discover and develop copies of original products marketed by innovator companies once the patent protection term is over. While there is ...

Although Americans and foreigners alike tend to think of the U.S. health care system as being a "market-driven" system, the prices actually paid for health care goods and services in that system have remained remarkably opaque. This paper describes how U.S. hospitals now price their services to the various third-party payers and self-paying patients, and how that system would have to be changed...