BACKGROUND Guidance of patients treated with antidepressants is paramount for successful therapy. The aim was to assess patients' needs and suggestions for improvement of guidance by physicians and pharmacists during second generation antidepressant (SGA) therapy. METHODS Five focus group discussions were held with a total of 34 patients using an SGA. The discussions were conducted flexibly a...

The Department of Health and Human Services' proposed rule on Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act bans discrimination in health care. How the rule would affect formularies and P&T committees has prompted varying concerns.

This paper describes a project to specify, design, develop, and evaluate a physician's workstation for use in patient care. We conducted an ethnographic study of physicians' information needs in an outpatient setting, from which we derived a set of functional specifications for a physician's workstation. We have implemented an experimental prototype using an open systems, client/server architec...

1. Patients in the pharmacistmanaged group spent a higher percentage of time in target therapeutic international normalised ratio range (64%) than those in the physicianmanaged group (59%). 2. Patients in the pharmacistmanaged group experienced a lower incidence of bleeding (1.6 events per 100 patient-years) than those in the physicianmanaged group (3.1 events per 100 patient-years). 3. Mean co...

Medicare beneficiaries spent a median of $3,324 a year of their own money on health care in 2010. Ten percent of beneficiaries—almost 5 million people—spent more than $8,030. Half of all Medicare beneficiaries spent at least 16.4 percent of their income on health care. The burden of health care costs was particularly heavy for the sickest and oldest beneficiaries as well as for near-poor benefi...

There is mounting evidence that nutrition plays an important role in the aetiology and management of many diseases affecting Australians. Nutrition counselling provides a strategy for not only reducing patient suffering, but also for reducing the health care costs associated with these illnesses. At the forefront of providing nutrition counselling to Australians are General Practitioners (GPs) ...

A key policy breakthrough occurred nearly twenty years ago with the discovery that children are far more sensitive than adults to toxic chemicals in the environment. This finding led to the recognition that chemical exposures early in life are significant and preventable causes of disease in children and adults. We review this knowledge and recommend a new policy to regulate industrial and cons...

Because of the government's recent emphasis on controlling health care costs, health care providers have been receiving many more denials for payment of services rendered to Medicare beneficiaries than in the past. Often the denials are not justified and should be appealed. This article explains the step-by-step procedure in the Medicare appeals process and gives suggestions for presenting a ca...

Health care spending increased 8.2 percent in 2004. This was virtually unchanged from 2003, which suggests that health care cost trends have stabilized. Hospital spending grew 10.1 percent in 2004, also virtually unchanged from 2003, reflecting a small increase in the hospital utilization trend and a small decline in hospital price inflation. Meanwhile, growth in prescription drug spending cont...

Background: In contrast to other pregnancy complications the economic impact of stillbirth is poorly understood. We aimed to carry out a preliminary exploration of the healthcare costs of stillbirth from the time of pregnancy loss and the period afterwards; also to explore and include the impact of a previous stillbirth on the healthcare costs of the next pregnancy. Methods: A structured review...