conclusions our findings suggest the importance of high-risk behaviors in terms of etiological pathways, maintenance process and treatment interventions. results the results suggested that the model had good fit (root mean square of approximation = 0.07, comparative fit index = 0.95, normed fit index = 0.91, goodness of fit index =0.93) with the data. accordingly, the indirect effect of resilie...

Provider profiles are an important component of efforts to improve both healthcare productivity and quality. Risk adjustment is the attempt to account for differences in the risk for specific outcomes of cases in different groups in order to facilitate more meaningful comparisons. The value of provider profiles, whether used internally or released to the public, depends both on adequate risk ad...

“BUT our patients are sicker than yours!” is the refrain when physicians are faced with adverse comparisons of their patients’ outcomes with those of other groups, hospitals, or health systems. Meaningful and fair comparison of clinical performance requires statistical adjustment of outcomes for differences in clinical acuity of patients treated and complexity of procedures performed, among oth...

Instrumental variable (IV) and risk adjustment (RA) estimators, including propensity score adjustments, are both used to alleviate confounding problems in nonexperimental studies on treatment effects, but it is not clear how estimates based on these 2 approaches compare. Methodological considerations have shown that IV and RA estimators yield estimates of distinct types of causal treatment effe...

background : the age standardized incidence rates of esophageal cancer in women and men in iran have the fifth and eighth ranks, respectively. due to the high incidence rate of esophageal cancer and the necessity of knowledge of its geographical distribution, the incidence of this cancer was mapped at province and county levels in the present study. methods: the study population of this empiric...

Risk adjustment deters selection and helps to assure fair and efficient payments among health insurers or capitated provider groups. However, since conventional risk adjustment allocates funds among insurers or regions according to current population health status, it does not reward — indeed, it penalizes — provider preventive efforts that improve population health. This prevention penalty of ...

Widespread integration of market-based incentives into healthcare systems calls for — and has elicited — increasing adoption of risk adjustment. By deterring selection, risk adjustment helps to assure fair and efficient payments among health insurers or capitated provider groups. However, since conventional risk adjustment allocates funds among regions or insurers according to current populatio...