Bmc Health Serv Res
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2005
Comparative StudyRisk adjustment methods for Home Care Quality Indicators (HCQIs) based on the minimum data set for home care.
There has been increasing interest in enhancing accountability in health care. As such, several methods have been developed to compare the quality of home care services. These comparisons can be problematic if client populations vary across providers and no adjustment is made to account for these differences. The current paper explores the effects of risk adjustment for a set of home care quality indicators (HCQIs) based on the Minimum Data Set for Home Care (MDS-HC). ⋯ Risk adjustment is essential when comparing quality of care across providers when home care agencies provide services to populations with different characteristics. While such adjustment had a relatively small effect for the two regions, it did substantially affect the ranking of many individual home care providers.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2005
Patient satisfaction with out-of-hours primary care in the Netherlands.
In recent years out-of-hours primary care in the Netherlands has changed from practice-based to large-scale cooperatives. The purpose of this study is to determine patient satisfaction with current out-of-hours care organised in general practitioner (GP) cooperatives, and gain insight in factors associated with this satisfaction. ⋯ Patients seem generally satisfied with out-of-hours primary care as organised in GP cooperatives. However, patients who received telephone advice only are less satisfied compared to those who attended the GP cooperative or those who received a home visit.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2005
A primary care, multi-disciplinary disease management program for opioid-treated patients with chronic non-cancer pain and a high burden of psychiatric comorbidity.
Chronic non-cancer pain is a common problem that is often accompanied by psychiatric comorbidity and disability. The effectiveness of a multi-disciplinary pain management program was tested in a 3 month before and after trial. ⋯ A primary care disease management program improved pain, depression, and disability scores over three months in a cohort of opioid-treated patients with chronic non-cancer pain. Substance misuse and depression were common, and many patients who had substance misuse identified left the program when they were no longer prescribed opioids. Effective care of patients with chronic pain should include rigorous assessment and treatment of these comorbid disorders and intensive efforts to insure follow up.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2005
Consumer involvement in Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) projects - lessons from Australia.
It is essential that knowledge gained through health services research is collated and made available for evaluation, for policy purposes and to enable collaboration between people working in similar areas (capacity building). The Australian Quality Use of Medicine (QUM) on-line, web-based project database, known as the QUMmap, was designed to meet these needs for a specific sub-section of health services research related to improving the use of medicines. Australia's National Strategy for Quality Use of Medicines identifies the primacy of consumers as a major principle for quality use of medicines, and aims to support consumer led research. The aim of this study was to determine how consumers as a group have been represented in QUM projects in Australia. A secondary aim was to investigate how the projects with consumer involvement fit into Australia's QUM policy framework. ⋯ Health services research relating to QUM is active in Australia and the projects are collated and searchable on the web-based interactive QUMmap. Healthcare professionals appear to be dominating nominally 'consumer focussed' research, with less than half of these projects actively involving the consumers or directly benefiting consumers. The QUMmap provides a valuable tool for policy analysis and for provision of future directions through identification of QUM initiatives.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2005
Volume-based referral for cardiovascular procedures in the United States: a cross-sectional regression analysis.
We sought to estimate the numbers of patients affected and deaths avoided by adopting the Leapfrog Group's recommended hospital procedure volume minimums for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). In addition to hospital risk-adjusted mortality standards, the Leapfrog Group recommends annual hospital procedure minimums of 450 for CABG and 400 for PCI to reduce procedure-associated mortality. ⋯ Recommended hospital CABG and PCI volume minimums would prevent 728 deaths annually in the United States, fewer than previously estimated. It is unclear whether a policy requiring the movement of large numbers of patients to avoid relatively few deaths is feasible or effective.