Background: Non-adherence to essential chronic medications is common and leads to substantial morbidity, mortality, and avoidable healthcare costs. Recent studies have recognized the frequency of primary non-adherence, when patients do not fill their first prescription for a new medication. Little is known about what interventions could reduce rates of primary non-adherence. We evaluated two in...

OBJECTIVE To assess the incidence of potentially avoidable complications contributing to death of children with head injuries. DESIGN Retrospective review of children who died with head injuries from 1979 to 1986 from data of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Hospital Activity Analyses, case notes, coroners' records, and necropsy reports. SETTING District general hospitals and ...

Avoidable deaths have been employed as indicators of health care quality. The aim of this study was to identify factors associated with avoidable deaths from birth to four years of age among children from the 2004 Pelotas (Brazil) birth cohort study. From January 1st, 2004, to December 31st, 2005, deaths were monitored on a daily basis and the causes were investigated and classified according t...

BACKGROUND Although the risk of dying during childbirth or from complications afterward has been greatly reduced during the past 100 years, the current rate of approximately 1 death in 10,000 live births is still too high. The goal of the US Department of Health and Human Services is to reduce this rate by more than half by the year 2010. OBJECTIVE To present Wisconsin data regarding pregnanc...

Avoidable hospitalizations represent a key indicator for access to, and the quality of, primary care. Therefore, understanding their behavior is essential in terms of management of healthcare resources and costs. This analysis examines the affect of 2 healthcare strategies on the rate of avoidable hospitalization, managed care and the healthcare safety net. The avoidable hospitalizations defini...

purpose : to determine the anatomical site and underlying causes of blindness and severe visual impairment (bl/svi), in schools for the blind in east azerbaijan state with determining potentially preventable and treatable causes. methods : between october 2003 and november 2004 a total of 124 students attending three schools for the blind in east azerbaijan state were examined clinically and da...

Introduction: Hospitalization of patients with cancer has a significant economic impact and avoidance where unnecessary has great potential for significant cost savings for patients, individual hospitals and the health system in general. Methods: Demographic, clinical and economical data were collected from medical records in our hospital retrospectively. Oncology clinicians reviewed medical re...

BACKGROUND To the authors' knowledge, the extent to which death from bladder cancer is attributable to tumor biology or physician practice patterns is unknown. For this reason, the relative importance of broadening indications for aggressive therapy has unclear implications. METHODS Patients whose deaths were caused directly by bladder cancer were identified using institutional (n = 126 patie...