Medical Care

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate inter-hospital variation in 90-day total episode spending for sepsis, estimate the relative contributions of each component of spending, and identify drivers of spending across the distribution of episode spending on sepsis care. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Medicare fee-for-service claims for beneficiaries (n=324,694) discharged from acute care hospitals for sepsis, defined by MS-DRG, between October 2014 and September 2018. RESEARCH DESIGN: Multiple linear regression with hospital-level fixed effects was used to identify average hospital differences in 90-day episode spending...

STUDY DESIGN: Interrupted time series analysis of a retrospective, electronic health record cohort. OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between the implementation of Medicare's sepsis reporting measure (SEP-1) and sepsis diagnosis rates as assessed in clinical documentation. BACKGROUND: The role of health policy in the effort to improve sepsis diagnosis remains unclear. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Adult patients hospitalized with suspected infection and organ dysfunction within 6 hours of presentation to the emergency department, admitted to one of 11 hospitals in a multi-hospital health system from January 2013 to December 2017...

BACKGROUND: The provision of high-quality hospital care requires adequate space, buildings, and equipment, although redundant infrastructure could also drive service overprovision. OBJECTIVE: To explore the distribution of physical hospital resources-that is, capital assets-in the United States; its correlation with indicators of community health and nonhealth factors; and the association between hospital capital density and regional hospital utilization and costs...

BACKGROUND: The Latino health paradox is the phenomenon whereby recent Latino immigrants have, on average, better health outcomes on some indicators than Latino immigrants who have lived in the United States longer and US-born Latinos and non-Latino Whites. This study examined whether the paradox holds after accounting for health care access and utilization. METHODS: The 2019-2020 National Health Interview Survey data were used. The main predictors included population groups of foreign-born and US-born Latinos (Mexican or non-Mexican) versus US-born non-Latino Whites...

OBJECTIVES: Home health care serves millions of Americans who are "Aging in Place," including the rapidly growing population of Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees. This study systematically reviewed extant evidence illustrating home health care (HHC) services to MA enrollees. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was conducted in 6 electronic databases to identify eligible studies, which resulted in 386 articles. Following 2 rounds of screening, 30 eligible articles were identified...

BACKGROUND: Workplace injuries adversely affect worker well-being and may worsen staffing shortages and turnover in nursing homes. A better understanding of the trends in injuries in nursing homes including organizational factors associated with injuries can help improve our efforts in addressing worker injuries. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the trends in injuries and organizational correlates of injuries in US nursing homes. RESEARCH DESIGN: We combine national injury tracking data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2016-2019) with nursing home characteristics from Nursing Home Compare...

Electronic medical record (EMR) data present many opportunities for population health research. The use of EMR data for population risk models can be impeded by the high proportion of missingness in key patient variables. Common approaches like complete case analysis and multiple imputation may not be appropriate for some population health initiatives that require a single, complete analytic data set. In this study, we demonstrate a sequential hot-deck imputation (HDI) procedure to address missingness in a set of cardiometabolic measures in an EMR data set...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: The increasing trend of multiple chronic conditions across the world has worsened the problem of medication duplication in health care systems without gatekeeping or referral requirement. Thus, to overcome this problem, a reminder letter has been developed in Taiwan to nudge patients to engage in medication management. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of reminder letter on reducing duplicated medications. RESEARCH DESIGN: A 2-arm randomized controlled trial design...

BACKGROUND: Many older women are screened for breast cancer beyond guideline-recommended thresholds. One contributor is pro-screening messaging from health care professionals, media, and family/friends. In this project, we developed and evaluated messages for reducing overscreening in older women. METHODS: We surveyed women ages 65+ who were members of a nationally representative online panel. We constructed 8 messages describing reasons to consider stopping mammograms, including guideline recommendations, false positives, overdiagnosis, and diminishing benefits from screening due to competing risks...

BACKGROUND: Involving patients in the health-care delivery innovation has many benefits. Open social innovation (OSI) presents a fitting lens to examine and advance patient engagement in innovation. OSI offers a participatory approach to innovation, in which diverse groups of participants collaboratively generate ideas and scale solutions on complex social challenges. PURPOSE: This study (1) describes a pilot application of OSI, in which individuals serving on a hospital's patients and family advisory councils (PFACs) were invited to participate in an innovation contest and (2) explores the extent to which patients' beliefs about their role in innovation relate to their participation in the contest...

BACKGROUND: Frailty is an aging-related syndrome of reduced physiological reserve to maintain homeostasis. The Faurot frailty index has been validated as a Medicare claims-based proxy for predicting frailty using billing information from a user-specified ascertainment window. OBJECTIVES: We assessed the validity of the Faurot frailty index as a predictor of the frailty phenotype and 1-year mortality using varying frailty ascertainment windows. RESEARCH DESIGN: We identified older adults (66+ y) in Round 5 (2015) of the National Health and Aging Trends Study with Medicare claims linkage...

BACKGROUND: Using federal funds from the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services funded the 2011-2021 Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive programs throughout the country. OBJECTIVE: Identify the market factors associated with Meaningful Use (MU) of EHRs after primary care providers (PCPs) enrolled in the Florida-EHR incentives program through Adopting, Improving, or Upgrading (AIU) an EHR technology...

OBJECTIVES: To examine the association of prestroke continuity of care (COC) with postdischarge health care utilization and expenditures. STUDY POPULATION: The study population included 2233 patients with a diagnosis of stroke or a transient ischemic attack hospitalized in one of 41 hospitals in North Carolina between March 2016 and July 2019 and discharged directly home from acute care. METHODS: COC was assessed from linked CMS Medicare claims using the Modified, Modified Continuity Index (MMCI)...

BACKGROUND: Evidence of higher hospital volume being associated with improved outcomes for patients undergoing total knee replacement (TKR) is mostly based on arbitrary distribution-based thresholds. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to define outcome-based volume thresholds using data from a national database. METHODS: We used the MedPAR Limited Data Set inpatient data from 2010-2015 to identify patients who had undergone primary TKR. Surgical and TKR specific complications occurring within the index hospitalization and all-cause readmission within 90 days were considered adverse events...

OBJECTIVE: Length of stay (LOS) is an important metric for the organization and scheduling of care activities. This study sought to propose a LOS prediction method based on deep learning using widely available administrative data from acute and emergency care and compare it with other methods. PATIENTS AND METHODS: All admissions between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2019, at 6 university hospitals of the Hospices Civils de Lyon metropolis were included, leading to a cohort of 1,140,100 stays of 515,199 patients...

OBJECTIVES: To examine Black-White patient differences in mortality and other hospital outcomes among Veterans treated in Veterans Affairs (VA) and non-VA hospitals. BACKGROUND: Lower hospital mortality has been documented in older Black patients relative to White patients, yet the mechanisms have not been determined. Comparing other hospital outcomes and multiple hospital systems may help inform the reasons for these differences. METHODS: Repeated cross-sectional analysis of hospitalization records was conducted for Veterans discharged in VA and non-VA hospitals from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2017 in 11 states...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: Health care overuse is pervasive in countries with advanced health care delivery systems. We hypothesize that effective interventions to reduce low-value care that targets patients or clinicians are mediated by psychological and cognitive processes that change behaviors and that interventions targeting these processes are varied. Thus, we performed a scoping review of experimental studies of interventions, including the interventions' objectives and characteristics, to reduce low-value care that targeted psychological and cognitive processes...

OBJECTIVE: To determine which hospital nursing resources (staffing, skill mix, nurse education, and nurse work environment) are most predictive of hospital Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and System (HCAHPS) performance. BACKGROUND: HCAHPS surveying is designed to quantify patient experience, a measure of patient-centered care. Hospitals are financially incentivized through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to achieve high HCAHPS ratings, but little is known about what modifiable hospital factors are associated with higher HCAHPS ratings...