American journal of preventive medicine
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Comparative Study
How does managed care manage the frail elderly? The case of hospital readmissions in fee-for-service versus HMO systems.
This study examined whether hospital readmissions varied among the frail elderly in managed care versus fee-for-service (FFS) systems. ⋯ In this group of frail elderly Medicare beneficiaries, those enrolled in an HMO were more likely to have a preventable hospital readmission than those receiving care under FFS. These results suggest that policies promoting stringent approaches to utilization control (e.g., early hospital discharge, reduced levels of post-acute care, and restricted use of home health services) may be problematic for the frail elderly.
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Cigars have been heavily promoted in recent years. The nature and extent of the resultant increase in cigar smoking needs to be understood before the public health implications can be assessed. ⋯ If more people begin to smoke cigars daily, or if cigar use leads young people to initiate cigarette smoking or leads former cigarette smokers to relapse to cigarette smoking, the recent trends in cigar use may have public health implications.