Environmental epidemiologic research on respiratory symptoms presents unique types of data, typically requiring simultaneous analysis of both time- and person-varying factors. In this paper, the authors propose a new, simple model that incorporates such factors and controls for each person's prior history of symptoms. The Yale Mother and Infant Health Study was undertaken to investigate the eff...

Episode creation describes the task of classifying medical events and related clinical data to a high-level concept, such as a disease, illness or care. Traditional approaches to the problem have been limited to feature-poor claims records utilizing simplistic strategies such as rules, filters and code transformations. However, these approaches have suffered a number of shortcomings including: ...

BACKGROUND Identifying fall-related injuries and costs using healthcare claims data is cost-effective and easier to implement than using medical records or patient self-report to track falls. We developed a comprehensive four-step algorithm for identifying episodes of care for fall-related injuries and associated costs, using fee-for-service Medicare and Medicare Advantage health plan claims da...

OBJECTIVE To address gaps in knowledge about disability rates and costs of short-term disability by answering the following questions: (1) what is the incidence and the costs of short-term disability episodes related to mental disorders? and (2) how do these figures compare with those of short-term disability episodes related to physical disorders? METHODS The data set comes from a Canadian r...

Twenty-two recipients of HLA-nonidentical living related and nonrelated renal allografts were studied for alterations in the relative percentage of OKT4-positive peripheral blood T-cells after transplantation. Characteristic shifts in the ratio of T-helper to T -suppressor/cytotoxic cells (TH/TS-C), but not absolute cell numbers, were demonstrated to correspond with the status of the allog...