CONTEXT Although longitudinal community-based care of patients provides opportunities for teaching patient centredness and chronic disease management, there is a paucity of literature assessing learning outcomes of these clerkships. This study examines learning outcomes among students participating in longitudinal community based follow-up of patients discharged from the hospital. METHODS The...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine hospitalizations for heart failure in the U.S. during the past 26 years. BACKGROUND Heart failure increased in the U.S.; however, little is known about the long-term trends in diseases leading to hospitalizations among patients with heart failure. METHODS Using National Hospital Discharge Survey data from 1979 to 2004, we assessed trends...

In a prospective long-term follow-up of 84 patients 21 years after first hospitalisation for anorexia nervosa, we found that 50.6% had achieved a full recovery, 10.4% still met full diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa, and 15.6% had died from causes related to anorexia nervosa. Predictors of outcome included physical, social, and psychological variables.

This brief reviews recent efforts to measure and reduce potentially avoidable hospitalization and improve care transitions for individuals who use long-term care, including residents of nursing homes and people in homeand community-based service settings. We describe three areas in which progress is needed: (1) validated measures of avoidable hospitalizations and care transitions for use in lon...

Interim results of the Medicare health support (MHS) demonstration projects suggest that commercial disease management (DM) is unable to deliver short-term medical cost savings. This is not surprising given the current DM program focus on compliance with process measures that may only lead to cost savings in the long-term. A program focused on reducing near-term hospitalizations is more likely ...

BACKGROUND A candidate tetravalent dengue vaccine is being assessed in three clinical trials involving more than 35,000 children between the ages of 2 and 16 years in Asian-Pacific and Latin American countries. We report the results of long-term follow-up interim analyses and integrated efficacy analyses. METHODS We are assessing the incidence of hospitalization for virologically confirmed de...

OBJECTIVES To examine trends of influenza vaccination in nursing homes before and after public reporting (objective-1), and to assess the effect of influenza vaccinations on hospitalization events (objective-2). RESEARCH DESIGN Nursing Home Compare (NHC) database was used to obtain influenza vaccination rates during the 2005-2006, 2006-2007, and 2007-2008 flu seasons (objective-1). The 2005-2...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the accuracy of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) in identifying hospitalization events and payment source among nursing home residents. RESEARCH DESIGN The 2003 MDS, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review File (MedPAR), Medicare denominator file, Medicaid Analytical Extract (MAX) long-term care file, and MAX personal summary file for 4 states (California, Ohio, New York, and T...

BACKGROUND The oral anticoagulant therapy - provided to prevent thrombosis - is known to be associated with substantial avoidable hospitalization. Improving the quality of the oral anticoagulant therapy could avoid drug related hospitalizations. Therefore, this study compared the patient outcomes between Dutch anticoagulant clinic (AC) regions taking the variation in chronic care management int...

We investigated the costs of Parkinson's Disease (PD) in 486 patients based on a survey conducted in six countries. Economic data were collected over a 6-month period and presented from the societal perspective. The total mean costs per patient ranged from EUR 2620 to EUR 9820. Direct costs totalled about 60% to 70% and indirect costs about 30% to 40% of total costs. The proportions of costs co...