Over the past few years, many studies have looked the macroeconomic, cultural and institutional determinants of corruption. This study complements these existing cross-country studies by focusing on microeconomic factors that affect bribes paid in a single sector of the economy. Using enterpriselevel data on bribes paid to utilities in 21 transition economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia,...

Under the new fee schedule, Medicare physician fees are 76 percent of private fees. Consistent with the intent of payment reform, Medicare physician fees more closely approximate private fees for visits (93 percent) than for surgery (51 percent) and in rural areas as compared with large metropolitan areas. Variation in private fees across the country is considerably greater than it is for Medic...

OBJECTIVES This study investigated issues related to the use of environmental control units (ECUs) with persons who have spinal cord injury and disease (SCI/D) to ascertain what, if any, changes are needed to optimize occupational therapy service delivery in this area. METHOD A questionnaire was mailed to 120 occupational therapists employed by facilities nationwide that serve person with SCI...

Molecular genetics testing has made several huge breakthroughs in the past two decades and many molecular technologies have been applied to our daily medical progress. However, the clinical utility has not reach a consensus by the medical and genetic peers as well as third party payers. The predictive value and clinical applications are variable from one condition to the other. Numerous questio...

OBJECTIVES To address the uncertainty associated with procuring pharmaceutical products, product listing agreements (PLAs) are increasingly being used to support responsible funding decisions in Canada and elsewhere. These agreements typically involve financial-based rebating initiatives or, less frequently, outcome-based contracts. A qualitative survey was conducted to improve the understandin...

BACKGROUND Claims data provide rapid indicators of SSIs for coronary artery bypass surgery and have been shown to successfully rank hospitals by SSI rates. We now operationalize this method for use by payers without transfer of protected health information, or any insurer data, to external analytic centers. RESULTS We performed a descriptive study testing the operationalization of software fo...

Presented at ISPOR 18th Annual European Congress, Milan, 7th – 11th November 2015, Milan UPDATE ● The major 5 European markets all operate socialised healthcare systems. In each there are different structures and organisations in place to assess the value of medical interventions, and a number of different decision makers who act on the basis of these assessments to ensure efficient use of heal...

In recent years many academics, health care providers, and third-party payers have focused their attention on estimating and discussing the quality of health care. This focus is derived in part from concerns that the incentives of funding systems, such as prospective payments, result in cost/quality trade-offs that have a negative impact on the health of beneficiaries (Poland, Bollinger, Bedard...