Recent policy reforms have sought to expand the role of managed care in Medicare, despite limited information about quality of care provided by Medicare managed care (MMC) plans. This paper uses a unique inpatient hospitalization dataset containing over 9 million records to analyze outpatient quality and access to care in MMC in four states from 1999 2004. Several econometric strategies are use...

The Austrian health-care system is characterized by free provider choice and uncontrolled access to all levels of care. Using primary data, the ECOHCARE study shows that hospitalization rates for the secondary and tertiary care levels in Austria are both 4.4 times higher than those reported from the USA using a similar methodology. At the same time, essential functions of the primary care secto...

This DataWatch examines the potential impact of socioeconomic differences on rates of hospitalization, based on patterns of hospital use in New York City in 1988. The research suggests that lack of timely and effective outpatient care may lead to higher hospitalization rates in low-income areas. For certain conditions identified as ambulatory care sensitive, hospitalization rates were higher in...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The vast majority of US dialysis facilities are for-profit and profit status has been associated with processes of care and outcomes in patients on dialysis. This study examined whether dialysis facility profit status was associated with the rate of hospitalization in patients starting dialysis. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & METHODS This was a retrospective cohort...

objectives: the aim of this study was to describe and explain older adults' perspectives on the experience of their hospitalization. methods & materials: this qualitative research adopted a content analysis approach. twenty seven participants (65-81 years) selected through a purposel sampling from three university hospitals in tehran went through open in depth interviews. all the interviwe...

background: by increasing the survival of immature newborns, intravenous access methods, used to provide intravenous therapy, became more important. more attention has been recently paid on peripherally inserted central venous catheters in newborns, although it is yet unknown in iran. in this study, we tried to discover the barriers to spread the usage of peripherally inserted central venous ca...

OBJECTIVES This study was performed to examine medical care utilization of psychiatric patients and to explore patients' characteristics associated with extended hospitalization. METHODS Data were extracted from information of Korean Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. All data associated with admission and outpatient clinic visit were analysed by patient characteristics. We selec...

OBJECTIVE To describe the lack of access and continuity of health care in adults. METHODS A cross-sectional population-based study was performed on a sample of 12,402 adults aged 20 to 59 years in urban areas of 100 municipalities of 23 states in the five Brazilian geopolitical regions. Barriers to the access and continuity of health care and were investigated based on receiving, needing and se...

BACKGROUND Re-hospitalization is common among patients with diabetes, and may be related to aspects of health care use. We sought to determine the association between patterns of health care engagement and risk of subsequent hospitalization within one year of discharge for patients with diabetes. METHODS We identified adults with incident diabetes in Alberta, Canada, who had at least one hosp...