Biomedical subjects

Karen Kuhlthau

Publications and source records attributed to Karen Kuhlthau.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Are minority children the last to benefit from a new technology? Technology diffusion and inhaled corticosteriods for asthma.

BACKGROUND: Racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care have been well documented, but few studies have addressed how disparities may change over time. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine the change in relative rates over time of corticosteroid metered dose inhaler (MDI) use in minority and nonminority populations with asthma. DESIGN AND SETTING: We used a cross-sectional survey for 5 periods of 2 years' each (1989-1990, 1991-1992, 1993-1994, 1995-1996, 1997-1998) using the National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS). PARTICIPANTS: A total of 3671 visits by adults and children with asthma to U.S. office-based physicians comprised our sample. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: We sought to measure differences in inhaled corticosteroid use for minority and nonminority adults and children controlling for gender, specialty, U.S. region, and type of insurance. RESULTS: Minority patients with asthma were less than half as likely as nonminority patients to have had a steroid MDI prescribed during 1989-1990. By 1995-1996, minority and nonminority patients with asthma were equally likely to have had a steroid MDI prescribed. Although differences between black and white patients resolved, differences between white and Hispanic patients persisted even after adjusting for insurance. Children initially were less likely than adults with asthma to have steroid MDI prescribed, and this difference persisted. Minority children had the greatest delay in adoption of steroid MDIs. CONCLUSION: Steroid MDIs diffused into minority and nonminority adult and child populations at different rates.

Administration, Inhalation↗

PubMed2005

Financial burden for families of children with special health care needs.

OBJECTIVES: We describe family finance-related burden experienced by families with children with special health care needs (CSHCN). The paper further seeks to describe correlates of family financial burden. METHODS: We examined correlates of family finance-related burden using multivariate methods and the National Survey of CSHCN, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of CSHCN. We also examined state-level correlations. RESULTS: Fully 40% of families with CSHCN, or 3,746,000 families nation-wide, experience financial burden related to their child's condition. Experiencing a finance-related problem is negatively associated with Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) indicators and positively associated with poor-child health status. States that better meet MCHB indicators generally have lower levels of family finance-related problems. CONCLUSIONS: Families with CSHCN have high levels of finance-related family problems. Development of appropriate systems of care appears to offer a mechanism for alleviating the financial burdens of these families.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Pharmacy-and diagnosis-based risk adjustment for children with Medicaid.

BACKGROUND: Risk adjustment is useful for adjusting health care payments based on patients' health status. OBJECTIVE: This work seeks to examine how well pharmacy- and diagnosis-based risk adjusters predict child health expenditures in Medicaid populations. RESEARCH DESIGN: We used 1994-1995 Medicaid claims files for all children ages 0-18 years who were not covered by managed care in 3 states: Georgia, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. We examined separately 6 risk adjustment methods, 2 pharmacy-based and 4 diagnosis-based. We compared predictive accuracy of the methods for the whole sample and stratified by state and Medicaid enrollment category. FINDINGS: Models with risk adjustment (either diagnosis- or pharmacy-based) had better predictive accuracy than demographic models. The pharmacy and diagnosis-based models had similar predictive accuracy. Risk adjuster performance differed by Medicaid enrollment category and state. Risk-adjusted models generally underpredict expenditures in populations with worse health status (eg, those in the Supplemental Security Income program [SSI]). The pharmacy-based models performed well for children in SSI relative to children in foster care. CONCLUSIONS: Both pharmacy- and diagnosis-based risk adjustment improved the prediction of health expenditures compared models without risk adjustment. No single risk adjuster performed best in all situations, suggesting that optimal choices of risk adjusters may differ by purpose and context.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The who, what, and why of risk adjustment: a technology on the cusp of adoption.

Risk adjustment (RA) consists of a series of techniques that account for the health status of patients when predicting or explaining costs of health care for defined populations or for evaluating retrospectively the performance of providers who care for them. Although the federal government seems to have settled on an approach to RA for Medicare Advantage programs, adoption and implementation of RA techniques elsewhere have proceeded much more slowly than was anticipated. This article examines factors affecting the adoption and use of RA outside the Medicare program using case studies in six U.S. health care markets (Baltimore, Seattle, Denver, Cleveland, Phoenix, and Atlanta) as of 2001. We found that for purchasing decisions, RA was used exclusively by public agencies. In the private sector, use of risk adjustment was uncommon and scattered and assumed informal and unexpected forms. The most common private sector use of RA was by health plans, which occasionally employed RA in negotiations with purchasers or to allocate resources internally among providers. The article uses classic technology diffusion theory to explain the adoption and use of RA in these six markets and derives lessons for health policy generally and for the future of RA in particular. For health policy generally, the differing experiences of public and private actors with RA serve as markers of the divergent paths that public and private health care sectors are pursuing with respect to managed care and risk sharing. For the future of RA in particular, its history suggests the need for health service researchers to consider barriers to use adoption and new analytic technologies as they develop them.

Diffusion of Innovation↗

PubMed2004

Correlates of use of specialty care.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines patterns of specialist use among children and adolescents by presence of a chronic condition or disability, insurance, and sociodemographic characteristics. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of national survey data, describing rates of specialist use, with logistic regressions to examine associations with having a chronic condition or disability, insurance status, and sociodemographic variables. SETTING: The 1999 National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative household survey. PARTICIPANTS: Children and adolescents 2 to 17 years old. OUTCOME: Parental/respondent reports of specialist visits based on reports of the child having seen or talked to a medical doctor who specializes in a particular medical disease or problem about the child's health during the last 12 months. RESULTS: Thirteen percent of US children were reported as seeing a specialist in the past year. Specialist-visit rates were twice as high for children with a chronic condition or disability (26% vs 10.2%). The specialist utilization rates for children without insurance were much lower than those for insured children, but among the children who have coverage (private, Medicaid, or other), specialist-utilization rates were similar (no statistically significant difference). Results of multivariate analyses predicting the use of specialists confirm the above-mentioned findings. Additionally, they show that use of specialist care was lower among children in the middle age group, minorities, children in families between 100% and 200% of the federal poverty level, and lower parental educational levels. We found no difference in specialist-visit rates between rural- and urban-dwelling children, by family status, or by gender. Differences in specialist use by gatekeeping status are found only among subgroups. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that, overall, 13% of children used a specialist in a year. Among the insured, a slightly greater percentage of children used such care (15%). These numbers were slightly lower than the 18% to 28% of pediatric patients referred per year in 5 US health plans, although the sources of data and definitions of specialist use differ. Our results showed that 26% of children with a chronic condition or disability who were insured by Medicaid use a specialist. Although the data are not directly comparable, this is within the range of previous findings showing annual rates by condition of use between 24% and 59%. These findings are consistent also with greater use of many different types of health care by children with special health care needs. Medicaid-utilization rates presented here were similar also to the rates found among privately insured children and children with "other" insurance. In our earlier work examining use of specialists by children insured by Medicaid, we speculated that Medicaid-insured children might face particular difficulty with access (eg, due to transportation or language barriers). The findings presented here suggest that children insured by Medicaid had no different use of specialists than other insured children. We do not know, however, whether similar rates are appropriate. As predicted, sociodemographic differences were pronounced and followed patterns typically found for use of health services. Lower rates of specialist use by non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics remains even, controlling for chronic condition/disability, status, insurance, and socioeconomic status. This is an important issue that not only needs to be addressed in using specialist care but also in many areas in health care. It is the near poor who seem to have difficulty accessing care (as is evidenced by lower use of specialists). In a study of access to care, similar results were found, with those between 125% and 200% of the federal poverty level being less likely to have a usual source of care. This is roughly the population targeted by the State Children's Health Insurance Programs. These findings cannot determine whether rates of use are too high or too low. Additional work on outcomes for children who do and do not use specialist care would further inform the work presented here. Extending that work to examine patterns of care including but not limited to specialists and generalists would be even better.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Risk adjustment for pediatric quality indicators.

The movement to measure medical care quality has been accelerating, spurred on by evidence of poor quality of care and trials of interventions to improve care. Appropriate measurement of quality of care is an essential aspect of improving the quality of care, yet some quality measures may be influenced by patients' attributes unrelated to quality of care. Risk adjustment is the term commonly applied to those methods that account for patient-related attributes, making measurement of health care quality as comparable as possible across providers or organizations seeing different mixes of patients. The measurement of quality of care for children poses specific challenges. In addition to these measurement challenges, analysts must ensure that quality comparisons among doctors, groups of doctors, hospitals, or health plans are not adversely affected by the likelihood that different types of patients seek care in different places. Although some techniques designed to adjust performance measures for case mix were developed for both adults and children, other systems are specific to childhood circumstances. The theoretical issues involved in risk-adjusting childhood outcomes measures for newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit were reviewed recently. Here, we go beyond the neonatal intensive care unit setting to consider risk adjustment for pediatric quality measures more broadly. In particular, we 1) review the conceptual background for risk-adjusting quality measures, 2) present policy issues related to adjusting pediatric quality measures, and 3) catalog existing risk-adjustment methodologies for pediatric quality measures. We conclude with an overall assessment of the status of risk adjustment for pediatric quality measures and recommendations for additional research and application.

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Children's use of motor vehicle restraints: maternal psychological distress, maternal motor vehicle restraint practices, and sociodemographics.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the relative contribution of maternal psychological distress, maternal restraint use, and sociodemographic characteristics to the likelihood that a child would not be restrained in a motor vehicle. METHODS: We examined data on 6251 children aged 0-17 years from the 1998 National Health Interview Survey. The level of children's motor vehicle restraint use (low vs high) was examined by maternal psychological distress and motor vehicle restraint use. Multivariate regression analyses were used to model the odds of children's low use of motor vehicle restraints, controlling for potential confounders. RESULTS: According to maternal reports, more than 10% of children and nearly 13% of mothers reported low use of motor vehicle restraints. Multivariate analyses revealed that maternal use of restraints and psychological distress were both independently related to children's use of restraints, with maternal low use as the stronger correlate. Older children were more likely than younger children to be low users of motor vehicle restraints if the mother reported that she was a low user of restraints. Families with male children, black and Hispanic mothers, and 4 or more members reported lower use of restraints for their children. CONCLUSIONS: Children's low use of motor vehicle restraints was associated with low levels of maternal motor vehicle restraint use and maternal psychological distress. Moreover, maternal motor vehicle restraint practices become increasingly important as children age. Health care providers should consider maternal motor vehicle restraint use, maternal psychological distress, and child age in addition to sociodemographics when assessing children's motor vehicle safety.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Breastfeeding advice given to African American and white women by physicians and WIC counselors.

OBJECTIVE: This study determined rates of breastfeeding advice given to African American and white women by medical providers and WIC nutrition counselors, and sought to determine whether racial differences in advice contributed to racial differences in rates of breastfeeding. METHODS: The study used data from the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey, a cross-sectional survey of a nationally representative sample of mothers with a live birth, infant death, or fetal death in 1988. The authors compared white women (n=3,966) and African American women (n=4,791) with a live birth in 1988 on self-reported rates of medical provider and WIC advice to breastfeed, WIC advice to bottlefeed, and breastfeeding. RESULTS: Self-reported racial identification did not predict medical provider advice. However, being African American was associated with less likelihood of breastfeeding advice and greater likelihood of bottlefeeding advice from WIC nutrition counselors. In multivariate analyses controlling for differences in advice, being African American was independently associated with lower breastfeeding rates (odds ratio [OR] = 0.41, 95% CI 0.32, 0.52). CONCLUSIONS: African American women were less likely than white women to report having received breastfeeding advice from WIC counselors and more likely to report having received bottlefeeding advice from WIC counselors. However, African American and white women were equally likely to report having received breastfeeding advice from medical providers. Lower rates of breastfeeding advice from medical or nutritional professionals do not account for lower rates of breastfeeding among African American women.

Adult↗