Widespread integration of market-based incentives into healthcare systems calls for — and has elicited — increasing adoption of risk adjustment. By deterring selection, risk adjustment helps to assure fair and efficient payments among health insurers or capitated provider groups. However, since conventional risk adjustment allocates funds among regions or insurers according to current populatio...

A new genus from Borneo, Borneocola Y.Y.Sam, is described here. The genus currently contains eight species previously classified as members of the Scaphochlamys Baker. The finding is based on the results of the morphological and molecular studies of Scaphochlamys throughout its geographical range and its closely allied sister groups, Distichochlamys M.F.Newman and Myxochlamys A.Takano & Nagam. ...

PURPOSE To attempt to quantify the potential for success of tele-endoscopy as a component of the VTMEDNET Plus telemedicine implementation, a multi-part prospective study was undertaken by faculty of the Vermont Initiative for Rural Health Informatics and Telemedicine. METHOD The study was comprised of three separate parts, evaluation of image quality, cost analysis, and identification of ref...

Hospitals and other health care providers are being squeezed by declining reimbursement and capitated revenues. As this happens they are looking to expand into rapidly developing and newly industrialised countries. This article will focus on the People's Republic of China as a country with opportunities for developing private hospitals and health care facilities.

Widespread integration of market-based incentives into healthcare systems calls for — and has elicited — increasing adoption of risk adjustment. By deterring selection, risk adjustment helps to assure fair and efficient payments among health insurers or capitated provider groups. However, since conventional risk adjustment allocates funds among regions or insurers according to current populatio...

This article discusses alternative methods for establishing a fairer pricing mechanism for Medicare recipients who enroll in health maintenance organizations and other competitive medical plans. The current method, based upon the adjusted average per capita cost, is inadequate because it fails to adjust premium levels for differences in health status; it establishes undesirable incentives that ...

OBJECTIVE Current pediatric well-child care (WCC) may be inefficient and inadequate with respect to primary care physicians' abilities to deliver prescribed preventive and developmental services. New Internet-related technologies may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of WCC. This article examines the potential resource cost implications associated with a change in the delivery model of W...

Excision of the proximal carpal row has proven over the past 60 years to be an effective technique for certain disorders of the wrist, including degenerative sequelae of scapholunate ligament dissociation and scaphoid nonunions, Kienböck disease, Preisser disease, and other fracture-dislocations of the wrist. The durability of this procedure may be due to remodeling of the capitate head to the ...

Evaluating Accountable Care Organizations is difficult because there is a great deal of heterogeneity in terms of their reimbursement incentives and other programmatic features. We examine how variation in reimbursement incentives and administration among two Medicaid managed care plans impacts utilization and spending. We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting the timing and county-speci...

PURPOSE The objective of this study is to develop an instrument to evaluate satisfaction with care for older adults in capitated environments. Although satisfaction with care is now widely accepted as an important outcome measure, there are relatively few satisfaction measures developed or validated on older persons. Because many older persons are unable to respond to surveys, separate instrume...