BACKGROUND We sought to examine the economic value of specialized lower-extremity medical care by podiatric physicians in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers by evaluating cost outcomes for patients with diabetic foot ulcer who did and did not receive care from a podiatric physician in the year before the onset of a foot ulcer. METHODS We analyzed the economic value among commercially insur...

It is meaningful for colleges to evaluate teaching staff annually. This paper developed a method to make fuzzy evaluation of teaching staff based on Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Technique (FCE). The main idea is getting experts’ opinions for proposed evaluation criteria, calculating the most appropriate weights to the criteria based on combination between AHP and Entropy methods, rating stude...

Identification and management the 'critical risk areas' where hotspot lead exposures are a potential risk to human health, become a major focus of public health efforts in China. But the knowledge of health risk assessment of lead pollution at regional and national scales is still limited in China. In this paper, under the guidance of 'sources-pathways-receptors' framework, regional human healt...

The evaluation model on technical innovation ability of small and medium enterprises is set up based on analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methods, which takes quantitative index as main parts and considers reality so that better practicability is obtained. Meanwhile, technical innovation ability of small and medium enterprises in Heilongjiang Province of China are ob...

In this article, we applied the AHP method with quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to analyze three sorts of basic educational mode combining production with learning and research, i.e. the automated instruction, the mode combining production and learning, and the integration combining production with learning and research, and obtained that the educational mode combining production...

C urrent discussions of the future of Medicare include proposals to increase the enrollment of beneficiaries in private health insurance plans. These proposals would provide incentives for beneficiaries to join private plans, rely on more loosely structured health plans such as preferred provider organizations (PPOs), change the way health plans are paid, and in some cases create competition be...

Background: Identify the optimal technique of radiotherapy for patients with high grade glioma. Our initial year of experience with RapidArc radiation therapy. Materials and Methods: Planning CT scans of 50 patients with grade IV glioma were reviewed and three plan sets by 3D Conformal Radiotherapy (3DCRT), Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and Rapid Arc (RA) were generated and the plans ...

CONTEXT Pedestrian and bicycle plans support community-level physical activity. In North Carolina, pedestrian/bicycle plans are becoming more prevalent. However, no studies have examined the spatial and temporal diffusion of pedestrian/bicycle plans. OBJECTIVES This study assessed (a) temporal trends associated with municipal pedestrian/bicycle planning from 1974 to 2011 and (b) spatial patte...