Nonmedical use of prescription medications--particularly controlled substances--has risen dramatically in recent decades, resulting in alarming increases in overdose-related health care utilization, costs, and mortality. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 80% of abused and misused controlled substances originate as legal prescriptions. As such, policymakers and payers ...

Staff attitudes are crucial to the successful implementation of systematic alcohol screening and brief intervention (SBI). The forms and extent of training needed to improve attitudes among psychiatric staff with regard to problem drinking is unclear. In this study, we assumed psychiatric staff to be familiar with alcohol as a problem area and therefore tested briefest possible training effort....

OBJECTIVE Despite the promotion and widespread use of routine cancer screening, little is known about the economic consequences of false-positive screening results. We evaluated the medical and nonmedical costs associated with false-positive prostate, lung, colorectal, and ovarian cancer screens. METHOD We identified 1,087 Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial partici...

BACKGROUND Although the Australian Translating and Interpreting Service offers the world's largest free telephone health interpreter service, it remains underused. This study explores barriers for nonmedical practice staff to accessing telephone interpreters. METHODS Data were collected through five focus groups of 4-8 people. Participants were receptionists and practice nurses from the Austr...

The World Health Organization reports noncommunicable disease as a global pandemic. While national and international health research/policy bodies, such as the World Health Organization and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, emphasize the importance of preventative health, there is a continuing distortion in the allocation of resources to curative health as a result of government f...

Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a critical illness that may result in patient mortality or morbidity. In this study, we investigated the outcomes of patients treated in medical center and nonmedical center hospitals and the relationship between such outcomes and hospital and surgeon volume. Patient data were abstracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan in the Longi...

OBJECTIVE To compare the use of laparoscopy and laparotomy for hysterectomy in treating benign gynecological conditions in nurses and nonmedical working women. MATERIALS AND METHODS A nationwide population-based study was conducted using data from inpatient expenditures of Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Datasets between 2008 and 2011. All women undergoing total hysterectomies via...

PURPOSE To understand the driving behavior of older adults, this study examines self-reported reasons for driving limitation or avoidance. DESIGN AND METHODS Baseline interviews were conducted (n = 2,046) as part of a community-based study of aging and physical performance in persons aged 55 years or older in Sonoma, California. Twenty-one medical and nonmedical reasons for limiting or avoidi...