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Biomedical subjects

S B McCracken

Publications and source records attributed to S B McCracken.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Health information services technologies.

Increasing demands for provider profiling have led to the growth of health information services units within payers and health plans. An important decision faced by these groups is whether to buy or build the information infrastructure necessary to support the activities of the department. The article offers an overview of a system that was collaboratively designed and built by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa and the Dartmouth Medical School. A case study illustrating the flexibility of the information system in adapting ambulatory care groups to the fee-for-service payer industry is reviewed.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1996

Applying case mix adjustment in profiling primary care physician performance.

This project was conducted with two objectives: developing a simple and meaningful performance efficiency index for profiling primary care physician (PCP) practice patterns and testing the explanatory power of the ambulatory care group case mix system in controlling for variation in patients' resource needs. The findings indicate that large administrative databases can provide valuable information for health services management. However, effort should be made to focus on methodological issues in analyzing those data sources. Conventional demographic risk adjustment factors (age and sex) are not adequate. Greater priority needs to be given to developing and applying additional risk adjustment systems to maximize the value of large administrative databases in profiling the relative efficiency of PCPs.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1994

Commentary on the Central Iowa project.

The trend toward informed consumer decision making is a positive development in the evolution of the delivery of health care services. Measures currently under development are a reasonable first approximation of quality and efficiency measures within a continuous quality improvement context that will evolve over time. The Central Iowa project shows that comparisons among health plans and providers can be used by these entities as a valuable source of information on customer expectations and as part of an internal quality improvement process.

Consumer Behavior↗
PubMed1974

The disruption of autoshaped key pecking in the pigeon by food-tray illumination.

Two experiments investigated the effect of food-tray illumination on pecking a lighted key that signalled food presentation. Pigeons key pecked less when both feeder and key stimuli preceded grain delivery than when the keylight alone signalled food. This detractive influence of grain-tray illumination did not result after prior pairings of the keylight with food. The involvement of associative and physical variables in autoshaping the pigeon's key peck is considered in light of these findings.

Journal Article↗