JAMA internal medicine
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JAMA internal medicine · Mar 2013
Association of hospice patients' income and care level with place of death.
Terminally ill patients with lower incomes are less likely to die at home, even with hospice care. ⋯ Patients with limited resources may be less likely to die at home, especially if they are not able to access needed support beyond what is available with routine hospice care.
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Diagnostic errors are an understudied aspect of ambulatory patient safety. ⋯ Diagnostic errors identified in our study involved a large variety of common diseases and had significant potential for harm. Most errors were related to process breakdowns in the patient-practitioner clinical encounter. Preventive interventions should target common contributory factors across diagnoses, especially those that involve data gathering and synthesis in the patient-practitioner encounter.
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JAMA internal medicine · Mar 2013
Availability of consumer prices from US hospitals for a common surgical procedure.
Many proposals for health care reform incentivize patients to play a more active role in selecting health care providers on the basis of quality and price. While data on quality are increasingly available, availability of pricing data is uncertain. ⋯ We found it difficult to obtain price information for THA and observed wide variation in the prices that were quoted. Many health care providers cannot provide reasonable price estimates. Patients seeking elective THA may find considerable price savings through comparison shopping.