Hospitals increasingly use process models for structuring their care processes. Activities performed to patients are logged to a database or a log. These data can be used for managing and improving the efficiency of care processes and quality of care. In this article, we propose the method for estimation of deviation of care processes from a care plan. Care plan defines the steps of a patient t...

Key messages • Dementia is a progressive condition but it is not always easy for care staff and family carers to tell when the end of life is approaching. This means that people with dementia sometimes do not receive the end of life care they would have wanted. • People with dementia may be willing and able to discuss preferences even when they are no longer considered to have the capacity to m...

This article reports the results of an analysis of the relationship between supplemental benefits offered by Medicare+Choice (M+C) plans and their plan performance ratings. We examined two measures of plan performance: (1) plan ratings as reported in the Medicare Managed Care (MMC) Consumer Assessment of Health Care Study (CAHPS), and (2) disenrollment rates. The results of our analysis indicat...

PURPOSE Survivorship care plans for cancer survivors may facilitate provider-to-provider communication. Primary care provider (PCP) perspectives on care plan provision and use are limited, especially when care plans are generated by an electronic health record (EHR) system. We sought to examine PCPs' perspectives regarding EHR-generated care plans. METHODS PCPs (N = 160) who were members of t...

BACKGROUND For cancer patients, information about their disease and its treatment is often delivered within a short time period, potentially leading to patient misunderstanding, which can impede optimal patient care. In this 3-part clinical study, we investigated the utility of an individualized care plan for patients with gastrointestinal (gi) cancer starting a new treatment. METHODS In part...

The claim that managed care plans are more efficient than fee-for-service plans has been made so often that it has reached the status of folklore, but the evidence is inconclusive. The claim is usually based on one or both of the following errors: (1) lower medical care costs mean lower total costs (medical plus administrative costs) and (2) lower HMO premiums mean HMOs are more efficient than ...

I examine the joint determination of health plan choice and subsequent health care utilization in the Medicare managed care and supplemental insurance markets. The objectives are to evaluate the welfare impact of the Medicare managed care program taking into account the effect of endogenous selection, and to advance the applied literature on health plan choice and health care demand. Standard m...

BACKGROUND Health system planners aim to pursue the three goals of Triple Aim: 1) reduce health care costs; 2) improve population health; and 3) improve the care experience. Moreover, they also need measures that can reliably predict future health care needs in order to manage effectively the health system performance. Yet few measures exist to assess Triple Aim and predict future needs at a he...