BACKGROUND Asthma is prevalent but treatable: adherence to evidence-based treatment lessens impairment and lowers the risk of future exacerbations. OBJECTIVE This report details recent trends in asthma prevalence, health care use, and mortality since 2001 and presents an overview of trends since 1980. METHODS Asthma prevalence estimates were obtained from the National Health Interview Surve...

Erectile dysfunction (ED), defined as the inability to achieve or maintain an erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance [1], is a common disorder that may affect 18 million men in the United States [2,3]. A meta-analysis of prevalence studies has demonstrated heterogeneous findings due to problems in reporting age categories, severity, and nomenclature [4]. Consistent with these f...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether delivering acne follow-up care via an asynchronous, remote online visit (e-visit) platform produces equivalent clinical outcomes to office care. DESIGN A prospective, randomized controlled study. SETTING Two teaching hospitals in Boston between September 2005 and May 2007. PARTICIPANTS A total of 151 patients with mild to moderate facial acne. INTERVENTIONS...

Medication in for ma lion is one of [he most important clinical data types in electronic medical records (EMR) This study developed an NLP application (PredMED) to extract full prescriptions and their relevant components from a large corpus of unstructured ambulatory office visit clinical notes and the corresponding structured medication reconciliation (MED REC) data in the EMR. PredMED achieve...

OBJECTIVE To compare the effectiveness of three computerized reminder systems in the delivery of five preventive procedures in family practice. DESIGN Prospective, randomized, controlled study. SETTING Ottawa Civic Hospital Family Medicine Centre. PARTICIPANTS Of 8502 patients 15 years of age or more who were not in a hospital or institution 5883 were randomly assigned, by family, to a co...

PURPOSE The purposes of this study were to summarize recently published data on Medicare reimbursement to individual radiation oncologists and to identify the causes of variation in Medicare reimbursement in radiation oncology. METHODS AND MATERIALS The Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data: Physician and Other Supplier Public Use File (POSPUF), which details nearly all services prov...

OBJECTIVE To examine strict smoke-free home policies among smoking parents assessed in pediatric offices. METHODS We analyzed baseline parental survey data from 10 control practices in a national trial of pediatric office-based tobacco control interventions (Clinical Effort Against Secondhand Smoke Exposure, CEASE). We used logistic regression models with generalized estimating equations to e...

Background. Low health literacy affects more than one-third of American adults, resulting in poor physician-patient communication, worse health outcomes, and increased medical costs. Many physicians are uninformed of their patients’ health literacy status. Current paper-based surveys require extra staff, time, and resources for administration, while a computer-based survey may provide efficient...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES Implantable loop recorders have proven efficacy in the study of patients with syncope and palpitations. Remote monitoring of patients with pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators has been shown to be safe and effective. The purpose of this study was to analyze the safety and effectiveness of remote monitoring in patients with an implantable loop record...

AIMS To examine whether a multi-faceted intervention among older at-risk drinking primary care patients reduced at-risk drinking and alcohol consumption at 3 and 12 months. DESIGN Randomized controlled trial. SETTING Three primary care sites in southern California. PARTICIPANTS Six hundred and thirty-one adults aged ≥ 55 years who were at-risk drinkers identified by the Comorbidity Alcoho...