Sounding board. The role of the private sector in an economy of limited health-care resources.
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An innovative mental health primary and secondary prevention program employing mass media was conducted in the Louisville metropolitan area. For 60 weeks during public service announcement time slots, 21 educational mental health and mental retardation messages were aired on local major radio and television stations. Three project goals were established: (a) improved mental health attitudes; (b) increased awareness of community mental health resources; and (c) increased utilization of community mental health resources. Systematic evaluation, based on data from client-initiated telephone contacts and surveys of the community, indicated that the project appeared to be successful in increasing awareness and utilization of community mental health resources. Positive change was indicated, overall, for attitudes related to cognitive structuring of problem situations. Attitudes related to behavioral resolution of problem situations appeared to be generally uninfluenced. Implications and future directions for the utilization of mass media in community mental health are discussed.
Selected summary findings from the World Health Organization/International Collaborative Study of Medical Care Utilization are presented, based on data collected during a twelve-month period in 1968-1969 in twelve study areas in seven countries in the Americas and Europe. A household interview survey of almost 48,000 persons, representing a total population of about 15 million, elicited information on demographic characteristics, on perceptions of illness, its severity and character, and on attitudes toward and use of major components of health services. Information was also collected on the prevailing health care systems and resources available to the study population, as well as on socioeconomic characteristics of the study areas. Standardized rates for those defined as "healthy" and "functionally healthy" are quite similar across the twelve study areas, as are the rates for persons who reported being sick within two weeks. Rates for the volume of sick days within two weeks vary widely, and levels of chronicity with disability are much higher in the four continental European study areas. Rates for volume of physician contacts within two weeks vary considerably across study areas, but rates for persons with contacts are more stable, although for persons with perceived morbidity of high severity, the corresponding rates are lower in the four continental European study areas. By contrast, the rates for persons with an administrative reason for their most recent physical examination within twelve months are substantially higher in the latter. Where unmet need for a physician contact is greatest, the volume of hospital nights used is also greatest; a direct relationship between these two measures is evident without regard to the ratio of hospital beds available to the population. Wide differences are observed between the extremes of the measures of need, resources, and use employed in the study, raising questions about the ways in which resources are organized to provide services and about the effectiveness and efficiency of these services.
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It will be necessary to coordinate the University role with health institutional policies concerning the definition of health goals, and personnel functions as the latter should be trained if and when they are offered the opportunities of grasping both theory and practice in an environment closely related to everyday problems and realities. Accordingly, health care changes must precede health educational changes. There are two factors that interfere with a proper integration between the education care system: 1) an excess number of medical (or health students that overcome teaching facilities and 2) the correct trend in health care, based on specialists, attached to large hospital centers in urban environments. No attention is paid in this way to the importance of the health team, to health promotion, health education, preventive measures, etc. In several Mexican schools new curricula have been developed in which students face actual health problems from the beginning of the studies and they are trained as another resource of the health system being involved in all type of health activities in health centers, schools, nurseries, out-patient community clinics, etc.
Causal modeling (path analysis) was applied to data from the 39 mental health catchment areas of Massachusetts to analyze the effects of sociocultural and health-resource variables on long-term-care utilization. The variables chosen explained 53 percent of the variance of long-term-care use by persons 60 and older: 41 percent was explained by the sociocultural variables and 12 percent by the health-resource variables. With data adjusted for age, the major determinant of long-term-care use was ethnicity: less long-term care was used in areas with more persons who were foreign-born or had a foreign-born parent. The effects of other health resources (supply of primary care physicians and use of mental and general (short-term) hospitals) were small and negative.
BACKGROUND: Complex digital interventions that integrate electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROM) into clinical practice in cancer have the potential to improve quality of life, increase survival, and reduce health resource use and costs. Such systems can help patients with cancer self-manage chemotherapy symptoms, reduce clinicians' workloads through automated decision support, and resolve problems earlier. However, more research on the cost-effectiveness of ePROM monitoring is needed. OBJECTIVE: This paper comprises two complementary components: (1) a systematic literature review summarizing and evaluating the quantitative and qualitative evidence related to the cost-effectiveness of ePROM monitoring and (2) a health economic model parameter extraction. We also conducted supplementary targeted searches and scoping to provide context to our findings. METHODS: We searched Ovid (including MEDLINE and Embase), Scopus, and the International Health Technology Assessment Database for original English-language papers published on or before March 2025 using search strings that combined terms related to ePROMs, health economics, and cancer/oncology. We included papers reporting health economic-related outcomes for ePROM interventions designed for adult cancer populations and excluded screening tools and conference abstracts. RESULTS: We included 34 publications from 27 unique studies and identified and analyzed 26 ePROM-integrated interventions within these. Most (23/26) of the included interventions explicitly described some form of alert handling and automated decision support based on remote ePROM monitoring. Of the 34 publications, 5 presented full cost-effectiveness analysis results, of which 3 were highly uncertain and lacked clear differences in costs and health outcomes between ePROMs and standard care; conversely, 2 presented strong evidence of cost-effectiveness due to quality-of-life improvements, reduced hospitalizations, and potentially more autonomy in health-related travel (eg, ePROM-monitored patients can drive or walk to the hospital instead of using taxis or ambulances). A further 5 publications reported partial health economic results (eg, cost-consequence and budget impact), of which 1 detected no difference in strategies; in contrast, 4 reported lower health resource use and costs of ePROMs, mainly due to hospitalization reductions. Overall, 12 of the 27 studies included a qualitative component but mostly focused on user experience and design-related themes; only 2 of these addressed economic-specific themes (eg, changes in workflow and resource use due to ePROM implementation and integration), indicating some potential for time saving due to ePROM monitoring. CONCLUSIONS: Some ePROM-integrated interventions demonstrated cost-effectiveness in cancer care, but the evidence base remains limited. Where evidence does exist, cost-effectiveness appears driven by reduced hospitalization and improved quality of life. Qualitative research within the included studies rarely addressed economic questions. We provide a detailed parameter extraction for use in future economic modeling and recommend research priorities, including quantitative mapping of ePROM symptom data onto health resource use patterns, and qualitative work exploring how ePROM implementation affects clinical workloads and patient-perspective costs.
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Professional Standards Review Organizations (PSROs) have been mandated to assure appropriate utilization of health resources. In order to meet this objective, PSROs must be able to determine when and why health resources are misutilized so that corrective action may be taken. This paper describes a study designed to identify and measure the significance of factors causing the misutilization of beds at one hospital. Using explicit Medicare levels of care criteria, a utilization review nurse coordinator determined the appropriate location (hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health care, home with outpatient or no care) or a sample of hospital patients. When a patient was judged inappropriately located on a particular day the nurse coordinator identified the barrier(s) to appropriate utilization, i.e., the reason(s) the patient remained in the hospital. Approximately 10 per cent of the 1,902 patient days were judged inappropriate at a hospital level of care. The most significant barriers to appropriate utilization were 1) the unavailability of skilled nursing facilities with the necessary amount of nursing services, and 2) the attending physician's conservative medical management of the patient. The implications for reduction of hospital misutilization are discussed.
PURPOSE: Individuals who self-report as Black or African American are historically underrepresented in genome-wide studies of disease risk, a disparity particularly evident in pediatric disease research. To address this gap, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) established a biorepository and developed a comprehensive DNA sequencing resource including 15,684 individuals who self-identified as African American or Black and received care at CCHMC. METHODS: Participants were enrolled through the CCHMC Discover Together Biobank and sequenced. Admixture analyses confirmed the genetic ancestry of the cohort, which was then linked to electronic medical records. RESULTS: Genome-wide genotypes from common variants accompanied by medical record-sourced data are available through the Genomic Information Commons. This data set performs well in genetic studies. Specifically, we replicated known associations in sickle-cell disorder (HBB, HGNC:4827, P = 4.05 × 10-148), anxiety (PLAAT3, HGNC:17825, P = 6.93 × 10-9), and asthma (PCDH15, HGNC:14674, P = 5.6 × 10-10), while also identifying novel loci associated with anxiety, asthma, and asthma severity. CONCLUSION: We present the acquisition and quality of genetic and disease-associated data and present an analytical framework for using this resource. In partnership with a community advisory council, we have codeveloped a valuable framework for data use and future research.
The National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974 is discussed, with particular reference to national guidelines, Health Sytems Agencies, state planning and development, technical assistance from HEW, and the purpose, plan and state approval of Health Resources Development.
We believe that the systematic evaluation of medical practices, especially those that are risky or costly deserves more attention. Available methods are limited, and definitive assessments of innovative or controversial practices are infrequent. Nevertheless, some evaluations have successfully enhanced the use of effective practices and diminished the reliance on ineffective ones. Greater efforts at evaluation can improve the quality of patient care, avoid waste and promote the more rational use of health resources. The cost of assessing new practices should be viewed as an intrinsic part of the cost of medical care. Physicians and medical societies bear primary responsibility for recognizing the need for this evaluation, for enlisting other experts, participating in technology assessment and working to translate the results of evaluation into practice. The commitment of government agencies, insurance companies and teaching institutions is also essential to an effective program of evaluation.
PURPOSE: The North West London Diabetes Cohort is established to provide systematic characterisation of a large diabetes population as a foundation for complications research and prognostic modelling. Many predictive modelling studies neglect the essential descriptive characterisation of underlying cohorts, focusing narrowly on model accuracy. This cohort profile addresses this gap by comprehensively describing the demographic composition, clinical characteristics and complication incidence patterns. The notably diverse, multiethnic population enables examination of ethnic disparities and supports future development of reliable prognostic models and evidence-based prevention strategies for diabetes complications. PARTICIPANTS: At baseline, 337 271 patients with diabetes were identified. It includes 279 067 patients with type 2 diabetes, 17 638 with type 1 diabetes, 33 590 with gestational diabetes and 6916 with unspecified diabetes. The earliest diabetes diagnosis dates to January 1932, with data updated to 27 May 2025. FINDINGS TO DATE: This cohort profile describes baseline characteristics of patients with comprehensive data collected on demographics (age, sex, Deprivation Index, ethnicity), clinical measures (glycated haemoglobin, body mass index, blood pressure, lipids and estimated glomerular filtration rate) and 14 major diabetes complications tracked longitudinally. Key findings for patients with type 2 diabetes reveal diabetic retinopathy as the most common complication (74.6 per 1000 person-years), followed by hypertension (51.0) and kidney disease (31.4). Cumulative incidence analyses using the Aalen-Johansen estimator, which accounts for mortality as a competing risk, demonstrated significant ethnic disparities, with black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic groups showing elevated risk compared with white patients. Time-varying Cox models identified strong clustering between cardiovascular and renal complications, confirming a cardiometabolic-renal syndrome. Mental health conditions (depression and anxiety) were prevalent throughout the disease timeline, occurring both before and after diabetes diagnosis. FUTURE PLANS: This cohort will be used as a platform for developing and validating prognostic models for diabetes complications, enabling risk stratification and targeted interventions. Future work will incorporate medication data to refine diabetes type classification, examine the effectiveness of antidiabetic medications in preventing different complications and address demographic differences in prognostic model performance and prediction accuracy. To better characterise lifestyle, further interrogation of electronic health record data will examine recording of advice given, including dietary advice, referral to weight management schemes and presence of alcohol consumption codes.
Between 1967 and 1973, 12 home dialysis training centers (HDTC), under contract to the health Resource Administration, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, reported training 1063 patients. Mean training time was 69 days; mean patient age was 40 yr with a range of 12 to 75 yr. Survival rates were 87% at one year, 74% at two years, 62% at three years, 54% at four years and 52% at five years. Male to female ratio was 3.2; there was no significant survival difference between sexes. Patients under 50 yr of age had significantly greater survival than did patients 50 yr and older. A "good" health status classification, defined by activity tolerance, signs and symptoms at the beginning of home dialysis, was associated with more favorable survival than were lower health ratings. Patients with glomerulonephritis, pyelonephritis and polycystic disease had better survival than did patients with diabetic, hypertensive and other renal disease etiologies. Although 51% of the patients lived 50 to 400 or more miles from the HDTC, their survival was not different from patients living less than 50 miles from the HDTC. Survival rates for patients with less than ten years of education were not significantly different from those with formal education as high as the university graduate level. Forty-seven percent of the patients were restored to full activity. These survival results are comparable with those reported for other modes of dialysis and transplantation and indicate that home dialysis is an acceptable form of therapy for a variety of patients.
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