Risk adjustment alternatives in paying for behavioral health care under Medicaid.
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OBJECTIVE: To compare the performance of various risk adjustment models in behavioral health applications such as setting mental health and substance abuse (MH/SA) capitation payments or overall capitation payments for populations including MH/SA users. DATA SOURCES/STUDY DESIGN: The 1991-93 administrative data from the Michigan Medicaid program were used. We compared mean absolute prediction error for several risk adjustment models and simulated the profits and losses that behavioral health care carve outs and integrated health plans would experience under risk adjustment if they enrolled beneficiaries with a history of MH/SA problems. Models included basic demographic adjustment, Adjusted Diagnostic Groups, Hierarchical Condition Categories, and specifications designed for behavioral health. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Differences in predictive ability among risk adjustment models were small and generally insignificant. Specifications based on relatively few MH/SA diagnostic categories did as well as or better than models controlling for additional variables such as medical diagnoses at predicting MH/SA expenditures among adults. Simulation analyses revealed that among both adults and minors considerable scope remained for behavioral health care carve outs to make profits or losses after risk adjustment based on differential enrollment of severely ill patients. Similarly, integrated health plans have strong financial incentives to avoid MH/SA users even after adjustment. CONCLUSIONS: Current risk adjustment methodologies do not eliminate the financial incentives for integrated health plans and behavioral health care carve-out plans to avoid high-utilizing patients with psychiatric disorders. (+info)
Recent trends in hospital use by children in England.
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BACKGROUND: Routine hospital statistics for England appear to overestimate use of children's wards and include numbers of well newborn babies staying with their mothers after delivery ("well babies"). AIM: To review trends in use of children's wards excluding data on newborn babies. METHODS: We reviewed routine, published, and age stratified data requested from the Department of Health to identify separately "well babies" and babies receiving neonatal specialist care from admissions (surgical and paediatric) to children's wards. RESULTS: Routine reports for paediatric activity contain large numbers of "well babies", (almost half the total) as well as babies receiving specialist neonatal care. After excluding these, paediatric admissions represent 9.9% of the child population aged under 5 years each year (an additional 2.5% are admitted for surgical care). Between 1989 and 1997 paediatric admissions rose by 19% and surgical admissions fell by 25% with a plateau reached in overall child admissions. There are now fewer beds in which children stay for a shorter time and there is more day case surgery. Neonatal specialist care work has risen despite a fall in births. CONCLUSION: Categories should be established for reporting paediatric episodes on children's wards separately from those on neonatal units, with better identification of "well babies". When monitoring use of children's inpatient facilities or planning new units, care must be taken to separate paediatric data on neonatal units from work on children's wards. Children's surgical episodes should also be taken into account. (+info)
Helicobacter pylori antimicrobial resistance in the United Kingdom: the effect of age, sex and socio-economic status.
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BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori antimicrobial resistance is the most common reason for eradication failure. Small studies have shown metronidazole resistance to be more prevalent in certain population groups. AIM: To determine the resistance rates in a large cohort of patients from a single centre in the UK, and to evaluate resistance patterns over time, according to age, sex and socio-economic status. METHODS: Consecutive patients with H. pylori-positive antral gastric biopsy samples were studied from 1994 to 1999. Susceptibility testing was performed to metronidazole, tetracycline, macrolide and amoxicillin by the modified disk diffusion METHOD: The Jarman under-privileged area score was used as a measure of socio-economic status. RESULTS: A total of 1064 patients were studied. Overall metronidazole resistance was 40.3%, decreasing with age (P < 0.0001, odds ratio for patients over 60 years 0.63, 95% CI: 0.48-0.80). Women were more likely to have metronidazole resistant strains (P=0.003, odds ratio 1.5, 95% CI: 1.15-1.91), but there was no association with Jarman score. Macrolide resistance was associated with metronidazole resistance (P=0.03, odds ratio 2.14, 95% CI: 1.07-4.28). CONCLUSIONS: Metronidazole resistance in H. pylori is highly prevalent and more common in women and the young, but does not appear to be related to socio-economic status. (+info)
Patients with diagnosed diabetes mellitus can be accurately identified in an Indian Health Service patient registration database.
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OBJECTIVE: The computerized patient registration databases maintained by the Indian Health Service (IHS) represent a potentially important source of data about the epidemic of diabetes among American Indian and Alaskan Native people. The purpose of this study is to determine the accuracy of this data source, and to identify the optimal search criteria to identify patients with a diagnosis of diabetes in an IHS patient registration database. METHODS: The authors compared the results of a series of computerized searches to a "gold standard" sample of 465 manually reviewed charts from a large IHS facility. RESULTS: Among patients ages 15 years and older, the best criterion for identifying patients diagnosed with diabetes was the presence of at least one purpose of visit narrative identified by a 250.00 to 250.93 ICD-9 code. The presence of a single computerized code for diabetes identified patients with diagnosed diabetes with a sensitivity of 92% (95% confidence interval [CI] 81, 97), a specificity of 99% (95% CI 98, 99), and a calculated positive predictive value of 94% (95% CI 85, 99). In a separate chart review of 462 charts of patients who had at least one 250.00 to 250.93 ICD-9 code recorded in the database, 435 had a diagnosis of diabetes for an observed positive predictive value of 94%. Because the prevalence of diabetes varies by age of the patient, the positive predictive value of the ability to identify patients with diabetes also varies by age. CONCLUSION: A computerized search of an IHS patient database can identify patients with a diagnosis of diabetes with an accuracy that is similar to the reported accuracy from other health care system databases. (+info)
Trends in hospital emergency department utilization: United States, 1992-99.
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OBJECTIVES: This report describes trends in hospital emergency department (ED) visits in the United States. Statistics are presented for overall utilization, case mix of patients, services provided, and outcome measures. METHODS: The data presented in this report were collected from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) from 1992 through 1999. To make the data points more reliable for trend analysis, the data were combined to provide 2-year annual averages for 1993-94, 1995-96, and 1997-98. The survey in 1992 was especially large so it was used alone. The 1999 data are the most recent year available and are presented separately. RESULTS: The volume of ED visits in the United States increased by 14% from 1992 through 1999, from 89.8 million to 102.8 million annually. This increase is mainly due to an increase in visits for illness-related as opposed to injury-related conditions. Although the population rate for ED visits did not significantly increase over this time period (rates between 35.7 and 37.9 visits per 100 persons), the rate for illness-related visits rose from 21.0 to 24.0 visits per 100 persons (p < 0.01). The most dramatic increases were observed in the overall visit rate for black persons 65 years of age and over, which rose by 59% from 45.4 visits per 100 persons in 1992 to 72.2 in 1999. For black seniors, both illness and injury-related visit rates increased at a much higher rate compared with trends for white seniors. CONCLUSION: Increased volume of ED encounters for persons 45 years of age and over was associated with a greater proportion of illness conditions presenting to the ED and the use of more services, medications, and mid-level providers. (+info)
The impact of statistical adjustment on economic profiles of interventional cardiologists.
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OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to identify preprocedure patient factors associated with percutaneous intervention costs and to examine the impact of these patient factors on economic profiles of interventional cardiologists. BACKGROUND: There is increasing demand for information about comparative resource use patterns of interventional cardiologists. Economic provider profiles, however, often fail to account for patient characteristics. METHODS: Data were obtained from Duke Medical Center cost and clinical information systems for 1,949 procedures performed by 13 providers between July 1, 1997, and December 31, 1998. Patient factors that influenced cost were identified using multiple regression analysis. After assessing interprovider variation in unadjusted cost, mixed linear models were used to examine how much cost variability was associated with the provider when patient characteristics were taken into account. RESULTS: Total hospital costs averaged $15,643 (median, $13,809), $6,515 of which represented catheterization laboratory costs. Disease severity, acuity, comorbid illness and lesion type influenced total costs (R(2) = 38%), whereas catheterization costs were affected by lesion type and acuity (R(2) = 32%). Patient characteristics varied significantly among providers. Unadjusted total costs were weakly associated with provider, and this association disappeared after accounting for patient factors. The provider influence on catheterization costs persisted after adjusting for patient characteristics. Furthermore, the pattern of variation changed: the adjusted analysis identified three new outliers, and two providers lost their outlier status. Only one provider was consistently identified as an outlier in the unadjusted and adjusted analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Economic profiles of interventional cardiologists may be misleading if they do not adequately adjust for patient characteristics before procedure. (+info)
Demonstration of the healthy worker survivor effect in a cohort of workers in the construction industry.
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OBJECTIVES: To assess the potential of a healthy worker survivor effect due to differential occupational mobility in a cohort of construction workers. METHODS: A cohort of 10 809 male employees in the German construction industry aged 15-64 years was followed up for occupational mobility, early retirement due to permanent disability, and total mortality from 1986 to 1994. Using the Cox's proportional hazards model of relative rates (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of occupational mobility, early retirement and total mortality were estimated according to medical diagnoses at baseline after adjustment for various covariates. RESULTS: During follow up, 2472 subjects changed employment, 359 employees were granted a disability pension for health reasons and 188 subjects died. A wide range of chronic diseases was associated with increased rates of early retirement and total mortality but not occupational mobility. However, a healthy worker survivor effect was identified related to disorders of the back and spine (ninth revision of the international classification of diseases, ICD-9, code 720-4), a common predictor of both occupational mobility (RR 1.17, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.32) and early retirement (RR 1.50, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.88). In total, there were about as many events of occupational changes (n = 41) as events of early retirement due to permanent disability (n = 39) significantly attributable to disorders of the back and spine. Differential occupational mobility preceded differential early retirement due to permanent disability by more than one decade. CONCLUSIONS: These findings show the need to consider a healthy worker survivor effect due to occupational mobility in occupational epidemiological research. Furthermore these results underline the necessity of further health promotion targeting work related conditions in the construction industry. (+info)
Schedule for rating disabilities: disabilities of the liver. Final rule.
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This document amends the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Schedule for Rating Disabilities (38 CFR part 4) by revising the portion of the Digestive System that addresses disabilities of the liver. The intended effect of this action is to update this portion of the rating schedule to ensure that it uses current medical terminology and unambiguous criteria, and that it reflects medical advances that have occurred since the last review. (+info)