Journal of health care for the poor and underserved
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · May 2004
Comparative StudyPromoting accountability: hospital charity care in California, Washington state, and Texas.
Debate as to whether private hospitals meet their charitable obligations is heated. This study examines how alternative state approaches for ensuring hospital accountability to the community affects charitable expenditures and potentially affects access to care for the uninsured. ⋯ The key finding from this study is that net of hospital characteristics, market characteristics and community need, Texas hospitals were estimated to provide over 3 times more charity care and Washington hospitals were estimated to provide 66% more charity care than California hospitals. This finding suggests that more prescriptive community benefit or charity care requirements may be necessary to ensure that private hospitals assume a larger role in the care of the uninsured.
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · Feb 2004
Do medical out-of-pocket expenses thrust families into poverty?
This paper estimates the impact of medical out-of-pocket expenses on families' well-being using the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Medical out-of-pocket expenses include the out-of-pocket costs from medical services and the family's share of health insurance premiums. Demographic characteristics, insurance status, and medical usage of the family are analyzed to determine which characteristics are most likely to impoverish a family. ⋯ Families without at least one person who worked full time for the entire year were also likely to be impoverished. However, children in the family had little effect on the probability that the family became impoverished. This odd result is probably due to the high correlation between parental health insurance coverage and the health insurance coverage of their children.
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · Aug 2003
Letter Comparative StudyReceipt of health services by low-income veterans.
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J Health Care Poor Underserved · Nov 2001
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialEffectiveness of reminder systems on appointment adherence rates.
The aim of this study was to determine the impact of reminder systems on appointment nonadherence rates in an low-income inner-city clinic population. A total of 2,304 consenting patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) automated telephone reminder, (2) postcard reminder, or (3) no reminder. In contrast with research on other populations, the results of this study demonstrated no significant difference in appointment adherence rates among the three groups. To aid in the development of more effective interventions in the future, individuals not attending their scheduled appointments were interviewed by telephone to determine reason for nonadherence.