Assessing risk of bias in the meta-analysis of round 1 of the Health Care Innovation Awards.

Background: Systematic reviews of observational studies can be affected by biases that lead to under- or over-estimates of true intervention effects. Several tools have been reported in the literature that attempt to characterize potential bias. Our objective in this study was to determine the extent to which study-specific bias may have influenced intervention impacts on total costs of care (TCOC) in round 1 of the Health Care Innovation Awards.

Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Four Advanced Primary Care Redesign Initiatives on Medicare Expenditures.

We conducted a secondary analysis of the evaluations of 22 sites participating in four primary care redesign initiatives funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Our objectives were to determine the overall impact of the initiatives on Medicare expenditures and whether specific site-level program features influenced expenditure findings. Averaged over sites, the mean intervention effect was a statistically insignificant US$26 per beneficiary per year.

Making Evidence Actionable: Interactive Dashboards, Bayes, and Health Care Innovation.

The results of many large-scale federal or multi-site evaluations are typically compiled into long reports which end up sitting on policymaker's shelves. Moreover, the information policymakers need from these reports is often buried in the report, may not be remembered, understood, or readily accessible to the policymaker when it is needed. This is not a new challenge for evaluators, and advances in statistical methodology, while they have created greater opportunities for insight, may compound the challenge by creating multiple lenses through which evidence can be viewed.

Profile of Justice-Involved Marijuana and Other Substance Users: Demographics, Health and Health Care, Family, and Justice System Experiences.

Substance users are more likely to have co-occurring health problems, and this pattern is intensified among those involved with the criminal justice system. Interview data for 1977 incarcerated men in 5 states from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering that was conducted between December 2008 and August 2011 were analyzed to compare pre-incarceration substance use patterns and health outcomes between men who primarily used marijuana, primarily used alcohol, primarily used other drugs, and did not use any illicit substances during that time. Using regression modeling, we examined the influence of substance use patterns on physical and mental health.

Measuring job satisfaction among healthcare staff in the United States: a confirmatory factor analysis of the Satisfaction of Employees in Health Care (SEHC) survey.

Objective: To validate the Satisfaction of Employees in Health Care (SEHC) survey with multidisciplinary, healthcare staff in the United States (U.S.).

Impact Of Health Care Delivery System Innovations On Total Cost Of Care.

Using delivery system innovations to advance health care reform continues to be of widespread interest. However, it is difficult to generalize about the success of specific types of innovations, since they have been examined in only a few studies. To gain a broader perspective, we analyzed the results of forty-three ambulatory care programs funded by the first round of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation's Health Care Innovations Awards.

Physician dual practice.

Physicians employed in government clinics and hospitals also frequently have private practices. The economic theory of such dual practice is relatively limited and recent. We provide a summary and comparison of five models of dual practice, including one we have developed based on total compensation theory and contracting limitations.

The medical treatment of depression, 1991-1996: productive inefficiency, expected outcome variations, and price indexes.

We examine the price of treating episodes of acute phase major depression over the 1991-1996 time period. We combine data from a large retrospective medical claims data base (MarketScan, from the Medstat Group) with clinical literature and expert clinical opinion elicited from a two-stage Delphi procedure. This enables us to construct a variety of treatment price indexes that include variations over time in the proportion of the "off-frontier" production, as well as the corresponding variations in expected treatment outcomes.