January 2009

Typical health plan data provide limited information for benchmarking physician performance using even a less stringent rule for attributing patient measures to physicians.

Scores on a new medication adherence scale maintained a strong graded association with antihypertensive drug pharmacy fill adherence among community-dwelling seniors in a managed care organization.

Substitutive Hospital at Home care for 4 common conditions is associated with cost savings.

Predictive models from diagnostic or medication data identify care management candidates who are more amenable to clinical interventions than groups identified using prior cost alone.

Perception of reimbursement was associated with electrocardiography but not with other common outpatient procedures. Future research should investigate how associations change with perceived reimbursement amount.

Patients in a Medicaid managed care plan who had cardiovascular comorbidities were not more likely to fill antihypertensive prescriptions than patients without these conditions.

At 1 year after Hurricane Katrina, the health burden of enrollees increased significantly more versus a comparison group. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations remained elevated.