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Biomedical subjects

J W Salmon

Publications and source records attributed to J W Salmon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Psychometric evaluation of the 12-item short-form health survey (SF-12) in osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis clinical trials.

BACKGROUND: The psychometric properties of the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12), a subset of the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), have been tested in the general population and certain disease states. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the SF-12 as a generic measure of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patient populations in clinical trials. METHODS: Data were aggregated from 5 clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in OA (n = 651) and RA (n = 693) patients. Patient assessments in these trials were made using the SF-36 and commonly used clinical measures of OA and RA at baseline and after up to 6 weeks of treatment. For the items of the SF-36 contained in the SF-12, the item missing rate, computability of scores, floor and ceiling effects, factor structure, and item-component correlations were evaluated. Clinical variables and correlations of physical component summary (PCS-12) and mental component summary (MCS-12) scores of the SF-12 with the corresponding SF-36 component summary scores (PCS-36 and MCS-36) were also examined. Analyses were conducted separately for OA and RA patients. RESULTS: A low individual SF-12 item missing rate (0.29% to 2.30%) and a high percentage score computability (90.9%-94.3%) were observed at baseline. No floor or ceiling effects at baseline were observed. The scree plot confirmed the 2-factor structure of the SF-12 items. Items belonging to the physical component correlated more strongly with the PCS-12 than with the MCS-12; similarly, items belonging to the mental component correlated more strongly with the MCS-12 than with the PCS-12. The correlations between the PCS-12 and PCS-36 and between the MCS-12 and MCS-36 ranged from 0.92 to 0.96 (P < 0.001) at baseline and at week 2, 4, or 6. Significant correlations ranging from -0.09 to -0.58 (P < 0.05) were observed between the SF-12 scores and clinical variables. CONCLUSION: The SF-12 appears to be a psychometrically sound tool for the assessment of HRQoL in OA and RA patients.

Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal↗
PubMed2000

Accrediting organizations and quality improvement.

This paper reviews the various organizations in the United States that perform accreditation and establish standards for healthcare delivery. These agencies include the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), the American Medical Accreditation Program (AMAP), the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission/Utilization Review Accreditation Commission (AAHC/URAC), and the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory HealthCare (AAAHC). In addition, the Foundation for Accountability (FACCT) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) play important roles in ensuring the quality of healthcare. Each of the accrediting bodies is unique in terms of their mission, activities, compositions of their boards, and organizational histories, and each develops their own accreditation process and programs and sets their own accreditation standards. For this reason, certain accrediting organizations are better suited than others to perform accreditation for a specific area in the healthcare delivery system. The trend toward outcomes research is noted as a clear shift from the structural and process measures historically used by accrediting agencies. Accreditation has been generally viewed as a desirable process to establish standards and work toward achieving higher quality care, but it is not without limitations. Whether accrediting organizations are truly ensuring high quality healthcare across the United States is a question that remains to be answered.

Accreditation↗
PubMed1998

Infertility services and managed care.

The birth of the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa in November 1997 brought issues of fertility assistance and their potential outcomes to worldwide attention. This Pergonal-stimulated multiple pregnancy ended successfully, but not without health hurdles and economic consequences for the new siblings and their family. This article reviews the general situation surrounding infertility services and, within the current debate of epidemiological, economic, legal and social issues, posits that managed care may be able to make greater strides than the present fee-for-service system in providing more accessible and comprehensive care to the 5.3 million US citizens at risk for infertility. Our conclusions suggest that managed care plans for infertility can aid in assuring quality and decreasing unnecessary costs. Managed care organizations should take the lead in providing infertile couples with an organized, humanistic approach that is mindful of the attending social issues. On May 5, 1997, a US District court in Chicago ruled that infertility fits the definition of a disability, and thus is subject to the antidiscrimination enforcement under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1997

Factors associated with antibiotic prescribing in a managed care setting: an exploratory investigation.

This multi-site, cross-sectional, observational study sought to identify attitudinal and social normative factors associated with the prescribing of oral antibiotics to ambulatory patients in a managed care setting. Participants were 25 physicians specializing in internal medicine, family practice or pediatrics from five ambulatory care clinics within a large, fully integrated health care system in a major midwestern U.S. city. The main outcome measure was number of prescriptions per physician written in the fourth quarter of 1994 for each of seven selected antibiotics. Correlational and multiple regression analyses revealed that behavioral intentions were significantly associated (P < 0.05) with both attitudes and subjective norms. However, physicians' attitudes, subjective norms and intentions were not predictive of actual antibiotic prescribing behavior. Prescribing behavior may have been a function of patient-specific rather than general beliefs about antibiotics. Methodological limitations related to the sample size and the sparseness of the utilization data may also have prevented a significant effect of intentions on behavior from being detected. Alternatively, in managed care settings, it is hypothesized that prescribing behavior may have been influenced more by non-psychological factors, such as management systems, formularies and therapeutic substitution programs, than they were by internal, psychological factors such as attitudes, subjective norms and intentions. Managed care is altering the role of the physician as an autonomous decision-maker. In response, models of prescribing must either incorporate variables such as perceived behavioral control to aid in the prediction of non-volitional behavior, model the decision-making of non-physician managers, or forego psychological models in favor of structural or system-level models of drug utilization.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1995

A perspective on the corporate transformation of health care.

The ever-increasing ownership of health service providers, suppliers, and insurers by investor-owned enterprises presents an unforeseen complexity and diversity to health care delivery. This article reviews the history of the for-profit invasion of the health sector, linking corporate purchaser directions to the now dominant mode of delivery in managed care. These dynamics require unceasing reassessment while the United States embarks upon implementation of national health care reform.

Delivery of Health Care↗
PubMed1992

Improving public health care: lessons on governance from five cities.

Policy-oriented investigations into public health care delivery have been limited, especially during the Reagan era of competition and profit-based health care, when the inner city was essentially forgotten. In this study, policymakers toured five urban public health care systems in different parts of the country to promote consideration of a new governance for Chicago and Cook County's complicated and uncoordinated care for the medically indigent. A comparison of patterns of governance revealed strengths and weaknesses of each model. Local leadership and the political will to evolve a system of care, with clear connections between the public and private sectors, account for each city's relative success in addressing mounting needs of inner-city populations.

Chicago↗
PubMed1992

Public health care delivery in five U.S. municipalities: lessons and implications.

Increasing pressures on private and public hospitals have necessitated a reassessment of urban health care delivery. Patients left unserved by stressed private hospitals have placed a greater burden on public institutions, which themselves are often old, underfunded, and in danger of closure. As policy analysts consider remedies, primary care in community-based settings has reemerged as an important component of planning. We present results of a comparative analysis of five public health care delivery systems (Boston, Dallas, Denver, Milwaukee, and Seattle), reflecting their economic, political, and cultural dynamics. Although significant differences in the relative centralization of care and reliance on community-based clinics are evident, the five cities discussed have incorporated an increased emphasis on preventive and primary care. The diversity among the systems is highlighted; adaptability is apparently a vital component in designing a public health care system appropriate to the needs of particular communities. Implications for Chicago and other cities are discussed.

Financial Management↗
PubMed1990

The futures of physicians: agency and autonomy reconsidered.

The corporatization of U.S. health care has directed cost containment efforts toward scrutinizing the clinical decisions of physicians. This stimulated a variety of new utilization management interventions, particularly in hospital and managed care settings. Recent changes in fee-for-service medicine and physicians' traditional agency relationships with patients, purchasers, and insurers are examined here. New information systems monitoring of physician ordering behavior has already begun to impact on physician autonomy and the relationship of physicians to provider organizations in both for-profit and 'not-for-profit' sectors. As managed care practice settings proliferate, serious ethical questions will be raised about agency relationships with patients. This article examines health system dynamics altering the historical agency relationship between the physician and patient and eroding the tradiational autonomy of the medical profession in the United States. The corporatization of medicine and the accompanying information systems monitoring of physician productivity is seen to account of such change, now posing serious ethical dilemmas.

Cost Control↗
PubMed1990

Corporatization of medicine: the use of medical management information systems to increase the clinical productivity of physicians.

Large corporate health care firms are seeking to reorganize the production of health services under growing cost-containment pressures from government and business payors. Medical management information systems (MMIS) applications are producing an increasing number of financially motivated utilization management interventions designed to constrain wide variations in the practice of medicine. In this article we examine how innovations in MMIS will be used to monitor practitioners' clinical decisions in order to improve the productivity of physicians and other health care personnel. As MMIS technology shifts power from previously autonomous physicians to corporate health care managers, the medical profession is likely to be subjected to far more administrative and bureaucratic controls than conceivable even a few years ago.

Cost Control↗
PubMed1988

Reducing inpatient hospital costs: an attempt at Medicaid reform in Illinois.

While California's Medi-Cal program and Arizona's Health Care Cost Containment System have been subject to scholarly analysis, little has been written about a similar attempt at competitive bidding under Medicaid by Illinois. This article describes the process of implementing the Illinois Competitive Access and Reimbursement Equity (ICARE) program signed into law in 1984. The article examines hospital data and access implications for recipients and compares the Illinois program with other Medicaid contracting programs. A more thoughtful process of policy implementation is urged for such reform attempts in Medicaid.

Cost Control↗
PubMed1987

The proprietarization of health care and the underdevelopment of the public sector.

Failure of hospitals in urban areas is a well documented, spreading phenomenon that is resulting in decreased care for the medically indigent. As financial conditions force greater closures and cutbacks among providers, this dismantling of institutions that have historically served the unfortunate deepens the crisis in access to medical care. In this article, pressure on private health care institutions to adhere to a more bottom-line approach is viewed in the light of an overall attempt by government to divert public capital into private sector coffers, a trend that is particularly significant because of the ongoing concentration and centralization within the delivery system. Set in a historical analysis of the corporatization of health care, a case is made to reveal the underdevelopment of public hospitals, certain urban voluntary institutions, and community-based clinics, i.e., those institutions left to serve the most needy, in the face of rampant financial success by proprietary providers catering to a middle-class clientele requiring less intensity of care.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed1987

Anomalies in Soviet healthcare.

This paper focuses on recent developments in Soviet healthcare. Since consistent and reliable information on Soviet health practices and outcome measures is difficult to obtain, we use multiple sources, extensive interviews, and personal experience to analyze the current Soviet healthcare system. Where facts are conflicting, we point to anomalies between what observers read, are told, and what they see. Our focus is on the organization of Soviet healthcare, the place of the physician in Soviet society, the pressing set of current health problems, traditional and emergent strengths in the delivery system, contrasts with Western medicine, and the problems and inconsistencies we observed.

Emergency Medicine↗
PubMed1985

Profit and health care: trends in corporatization and proprietization.

Throughout this century, profit has been an underlying motor force for health sector developments. However, as the concentration and centralization of health care delivery has proceeded in the United States, the pursuit of profit has become central. Even before the Reagan policy redirections raised "marketplace efficiency" as the supreme determinant of how the population's health needs are to be (or actually will not be) met, the rise of the nationwide proprietary hospital conglomerates over the last 15 years signified a new organization form. No longer camouflaged under an out-moded "not-for-profit" designation, the delivery of health care is now officially to be a "business" run for economic gain. Corporatization and proprietization trends have unmasked that profit regulates which people in which social groups get care. This article focuses upon developments which people in which social groups get care. This article focuses upon developments leading toward this monopolization within health services delivery. Specific attention is given to historical tendencies that have set the stage for its extension under conditions of a continuing general economic crisis, conservative health policy redirections, and rapid industrialization of the health sector. Scientific and technological advances have reshaped professional roles and relationships, and increased bureaucratization of provider organizations. Coinciding with these are major actions by the corporate class in health policy and planning, and an impending demographic shift where aging population cohorts give rise to expanding "markets" of middle-class patients for proprietary health care firms.

Commerce↗