Diabetes wellness care: a successful employer-endorsed program for employees.

Objective: A 12-month wellness program was provided for employees of a major employer in the Orlando area.

Methods: The program involved screening and measurement of baseline indices, educational sessions, telephonic support, quarterly laboratory monitoring, and provision of glucometers and test strips.

Results: For the 73 enrolled employees with prediabetes, serum hemoglobin A1c levels-mean (standard deviation)-decreased from 6.

The effects of nurse staffing on hospital financial performance: competitive versus less competitive markets.

Background: Hospitals facing financial uncertainty have sought to reduce nurse staffing as a way to increase profitability. However, nurse staffing has been found to be important in terms of quality of patient care and nursing-related outcomes. Nurse staffing can provide a competitive advantage to hospitals and as a result of better financial performance, particularly in more competitive markets.

Development of a food sensation and genotyping informatics system for the University of Florida Center for Smell and Taste (UFCST).

A web-based database system was created to collect patient data from taste and other food sensation tests from multiple sites. The tool was designed with the flexibility do add additional tests as desired. Additionally, it collects patient genotyping data which is imported from a genotyping repository.

A regression approach to estimating the average number of persons per household.

In the housing unit method, population is calculated as the number of households times the average number of persons per household (PPH), plus the population residing in group quarters facilities. Estimates of households and the group quarters population can be derived directly from concurrent data series, but estimates of PPH have traditionally been based on previous values or estimates for larger areas. In our study, we developed several regression models in which PPH estimates were based on symptomatic indicators of PPH change.