The Use of Claims-Based Data in Inpatient Public Reporting and Pay-for-Performance Programs: Is There Opportunity for Improvement?

Purpose: This study examined whether self-reported, facility-based data validation practices for claims submissions of cases flagged as Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) match professional and regulatory standards.

Methods: The National Association of Healthcare Quality members who work in an inpatient setting were invited to complete an anonymous survey to self-report their practices around facility-based data validation of PSI cases.

Results: The authors found widespread variation in how PSI administrative data are internally validated; inconsistency in the education and training required of staff who participate in this process; and relatively poor compliance with physician query guidelines and documentation amendment standards.

FSR Methods for Second-Order Regression Models.

Most variable selection techniques focus on first-order linear regression models. Often, interaction and quadratic terms are also of interest, but the number of candidate predictors grows very fast with the number of original predictors, making variable selection more difficult. Forward selection algorithms are thus developed that enforce natural hierarchies in second-order models to control the entry rate of uninformative effects and to equalize the false selection rates from first-order and second-order terms.

A sensitive method for the determination of chlorine-36 in foods using accelerator mass spectrometry.

A method using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) has been developed to offer a more sensitive alternative to scintillation techniques for the determination of chlorine-36 ((36)Cl) in foods. The main problem in method development was the potential interference of the sulfur-36 ((36)S) isobar. This was overcome by reducing the sulfur level of acid digests of food by precipitation of chloride as silver chloride, then purification by washing, dissolution and reprecipitation to present silver chloride as the AMS target.

Absorption of selenium from wheat, garlic, and cod intrinsically labeled with Se-77 and Se-82 stable isotopes.

There is limited information on the absorption of selenium from different foods in humans because of technical difficulties associated with isotopic labeling of dietary selenium. Wheat, garlic, and cod fish were intrinsically labeled with Se-77 or Se-82 stable isotopes. Labeled meals were fed in random order to 14 adults, with a minimum washout period of six weeks between each test meal.