CONTEXT With drug spending rising rapidly for working-aged adults, many employers and health insurance providers have changed benefits packages to encourage use of fewer or less expensive drugs. It is unknown how these initiatives affect drug costs. OBJECTIVE To examine how innovations in benefits packages, such as those that include multitier formularies and mandatory generic substitution, a...

OBJECTIVE To measure the per-event health plan costs for acute and follow-up treatment not directed by a clinical study protocol in a group of commercially insured patients in 2 managed care organizations following an incident hospitalization that included a diagnosis for a venous thromboembolism (VTE) event. METHODS A cohort of patients with an incident in-hospital VTE event, consisting of d...

In this paper we study the Rotor Model of Martins and Nienhuis. After introducing spectral parameters, a combined use of integrability, polynomiality of the ground state wave function and a mapping into the fully-packed O(1)-model allows us to determine the sum rule and a family of maximally nested components for different boundary conditions. We see in this way the appearance of 3-enumerations...

normal 0 false false false en-us x-none ar-sa background: we investigated the difference of clinical practice pattern between end‑stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (copd) patients with and without palliative care at the end of life in taiwan. materials and methods: a total of 91 copd patients who died in an acute care hospital were enrolled from one community teaching hospital in no...

OBJECTIVE Diabetes is a highly prevalent condition that results in substantial morbidity and premature mortality. We investigated how diabetes-associated mortality, disability, early retirement, and work absenteeism impacts workforce participation. DATA SOURCE We used the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a national household sample of adults aged 51-61 in 1992, as a data source. STUDY DES...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the relative socioeconomic costs of benign cranial base tumors treated with open surgery and gamma knife radiosurgery. METHODS In a retrospective study, we studied 174 patients with benign cranial base tumors, less than 3 cm in diameter (or volume less than 30 ml), admitted in the past 5 years. Group A (n = 94) underwent open surgery for removal...

OBJECTIVE The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) demonstrated that intensive lifestyle and metformin interventions reduced the incidence of type 2 diabetes compared with a placebo intervention. The aim of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of the lifestyle and metformin interventions relative to the placebo intervention. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Analyses were performed from a h...

OBJECTIVE To determine the cost-effectiveness of the 5-HT1B/1D agonists, or triptans, in the acute treatment of migraine. METHODS To determine the cost-effectiveness of the triptans, a meta-analysis was conducted of the efficacy data from 27 oral triptan trials, using the endpoint of "pain-free" status within 2 hours after initial dosing as the indicator of efficacy. Efficacy data were used t...

West Nile virus (WNV) is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause illness in humans ranging from mild fever to encephalitis. In 2002, a total of 4,156 WNV cases were reported in the United States; 329 were in Louisiana. To estimate the economic impact of the 2002 WNV epidemic in Louisiana, we collected data from hospitals, a patient questionnaire, and public offices. Hospital charges were conver...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the cost effectiveness of a four year, multifaceted, community based research project shown previously to help women quit smoking. DESIGN A quasi-experimental matched control design. SETTING Two counties in Vermont and two in New Hampshire, USA. SUBJECTS Women aged 18-64 years. METHODS Costs were the grant related expenditures converted to 2002 US dollars. Survey r...