Anecdotally one hears a great deal of concern and anger expressed by Oklahoma health care professionals over the growth of managed care in Oklahoma. Little has been in the professional literature, however, that explains the source of this resistance. The Oklahoma Rural Research and Demonstration Center sponsored a project to explore the opinions of Oklahoma health care professionals in regard to managed care. A 38-item written questionnaire was distributed to Oklahoma health care providers, health professions faculty, and health professional students. The results showed widespread concern about managed care across each of the groups. Primarily, these concerns were about the issue of quality. Differences between groups are also highlighted. Discussion centers around health professionals' lack of trust in managed care systems to do what is medically appropriate when cost is a counter consideration. Further discussion outlines what might be done to alleviate concerns and train new health professionals for a managed care environment.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Studying non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in two Oklahoma counties: a call for centralized cancer data management.

Anecdotal evidence for an increased incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) had been informally discussed within several clinical practices in north central Oklahoma. This study was conducted to determine the incidence rates of NHL in Garfield and Kingfisher counties and to evaluate whether these counties represented unique cancer clusters. Data were collected from medical records and tumor registries in 22 area hospitals between 1990-1994. The annual incidence rate per 100,000 persons for Garfield county was 15.51 (95% CI: 10.9-20.1), and for Kingfisher county, 24.22 (95% CI: 12.4-36.1). Both of these rates are increased from the national incidence rate of 13.7 cases of NHL per 100,000 persons, suggesting a significant clinical impact. However, a statistical significance was not detected given the conservative methodology and the small populations involved. The difficulties of performing community-based research, the need for epidemiological studies to reduce clinical experience bias, and the need for centralized cancer data management are discussed.

Adult↗