OBJECTIVES The goal of this study was to determine whether outcomes of nonemergent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) differed between low- and high-volume hospitals in patients at different levels of surgical risk. BACKGROUND Regionalizing all CABG surgeries from low- to high-volume hospitals could improve surgical outcomes but reduce patient access and choice. "Targeted" regionalization...

The American Community Survey (ACS) is the largest survey of US households and is the principal source for neighborhood scale information about the US population and economy. The ACS is used to allocate billions in federal spending and is a critical input to social scientific research in the US. However, estimates from the ACS can be highly unreliable. For example, in over 72% of census tracts,...

An explanation is required for the delay in implementing the regionalization strategy and the fragile nature of the combined decentralization and regionalization initiatives in Brazil. The article raises some hypotheses to clarify this intricate issue and reviews the structural conditioning factors of the regionalization process ongoing in the states. A national typology of the health care regi...

CONTEXT Minimum procedure volume thresholds have been proposed to improve outcomes among patients undergoing percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). How regionalization policies would affect patient travel distances is not known. OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of regionalization of PTCA on patient travel distances. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A retrospective cohort stu...

Regionalization of crop cultivation is the foundation of large-scale planting and a reasonable layout scheme, but current approaches mainly rely on qualitative analysis and heuristic methods, which cannot meet the progressively challenging demands. In this study, we propose a spatial clustering approach that consists of two steps. First, attributive clustering is applied on the indicators. Seco...

Regionalization of health care is a method of providing high-quality, cost-efficient health care to the largest number of patients. Within pediatric medicine, regionalization has been undertaken in 2 areas: neonatal intensive care and pediatric trauma care. The supporting literature for the regionalization of these areas demonstrates the range of studies within this field: studies of neonatal i...