Asthma care quality for children with minority-serving providers.

Objective: To compare asthma care quality for children with and without minority-serving providers.

Design: Cross-sectional telephone survey of parents, linked with a mailed survey of their children's providers.

Setting: A Medicaid-predominant health plan and multispecialty provider group in Massachusetts.

The immunization delivery effectiveness assessment score: a better immunization measure?

Background: Childhood immunization measures, such as the Health Employer Data Information Set (HEDIS) or the National Immunization Survey, assess the percentage of children up-to-date for a specified series of vaccinations. In particular, the HEDIS assesses immunization delivery to children enrolled in managed care organizations (MCO). Such measures do not assess the timeliness of immunization delivery with reference to recommended age standards.

Stratifying asthma populations by medication use: how you count counts.

Background: Asthma disease management programs typically use pharmacy data to identify high-risk individuals for outreach. Provider-directed pharmacy profiling seeks to identify physicians whose prescribing of recommended asthma medication is suboptimal. Both strategies require an accurate approach to counting prescribed asthma medication.