Public health reports
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Public health reports · Jan 1995
ReviewSavings achieved by giving WIC benefits to women prenatally.
The Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides supplemental food, nutrition and health education, and social services referral to pregnant, breastfeeding, and post-partum women, and their infants and young children who are both low-income and at nutritional risk. A number of statistically controlled evaluations that compared prenatal women who received WIC services with demographically similar women who did not receive WIC services have found WIC enrollment associated with decreased levels of low birth weight among enrolled women's infants. Several also have found lower overall maternal and infant hospital costs among women who had received prenatal WIC services compared with similar women who did not receive prenatal WIC services. ⋯ Because of the estimated program cost-savings, the U. S. General Accounting Office has recommended that all pregnant women at or below 185 percent of Federal poverty level be eligible for the program.
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Public health reports · Jan 1995
The systematic assessment of variations in medical practices and their outcomes.
The Health Care Financing Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services has carried out for several years the systematic assessment of variations over time and among geographic locales in patterns of care and patterns of outcomes experienced by Medicare beneficiaries. This routine monitoring focuses principally on hospitalizations and their outcomes (death and readmission) and is based on the Medicare enrollment file and the claims file for inpatient care. The period 1985-88 has been marked by declining adjusted post-admission risks for mortality (down 4 percent) and readmission (down 6 percent) for Medicare beneficiaries. ⋯ Hospital admission and population mortality rates, adjusted for differences in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the populations, vary substantially among areas as large as States and Metropolitan Statistical Areas, as do risk-adjusted post admission probabilities of death among those areas and among hospitals. Thus, if overall admission and mortality rates in the upper three quartiles of Metropolitan Statistical Areas were brought down to the average of the lowest quartile, there would be 20 percent fewer admissions and 12 percent fewer deaths within 180 days of admission for hospitalized patients. Although favorable trends in the effectiveness of the hospital care received by Medicare beneficiaries appear discernible, the existence of substantial variations suggests that further improvement may be possible.