Consistency in Self-Reported Race-and-Ethnicity Over Time: Implications for Improving the Accuracy of Imputations and Making the Best Use of Self-Report.

Background: Medicare Bayesian Improved Surname and Geocoding (MBISG), which augments an imperfect race-and-ethnicity administrative variable to estimate probabilities that people would self-identify as being in each of 6 mutually exclusive racial-and-ethnic groups, performs very well for Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AA&NHPI), Black, Hispanic, and White race-and-ethnicity, somewhat less well for American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), and much less well for Multiracial race-and-ethnicity.

Objectives: To assess whether temporal inconsistency of self-reported race-and-ethnicity might limit improvements in approaches like MBISG.

Methods: Using the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) baseline (2013-2018) and 2-year follow-up data (2015-2020), we evaluate the consistency of self-reported race-and-ethnicity coded 2 ways: the 6 mutually exclusive MBISG categories and individual endorsements of each racial-and-ethnic group.

Comparison of Alternative Approaches to Using Race-and-Ethnicity Data in Estimating Differences in Health Care and Social Determinants of Health.

Objective: The objective of this study was to compare 2 approaches for representing self-reported race-and-ethnicity, additive modeling (AM), in which every race or ethnicity a person endorses counts toward measurement of that category, and a commonly used mutually exclusive categorization (MEC) approach. The benchmark was a gold-standard, but often impractical approach that analyzes all combinations of race-and-ethnicity as distinct groups.

Methods: Data came from 313,739 respondents to the 2021 Medicare Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys who self-reported race-and-ethnicity.

The role of C-reactive protein and ferritin in the diagnosis of HLH, adult-onset still's disease, and COVID-19 cytokine storm.

Cytokine storm syndromes such as hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), Adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD), and COVID-19 cytokine storm (CCS) are characterized by markedly elevated inflammatory cytokines. However clinical measurement of serum cytokines is not widely available. This study examined the clinical utility of C-reactive protein (CRP) and ferritin, two inexpensive and widely available inflammatory markers, for distinguishing HLH from AOSD and CCS.

Inpatient Care Experiences Differ for VA and Non-VA Hospitals, With Different Patterns by Health, Race, and Ethnicity.

This article estimates differences and difference-in-differences in patient experiences for Veterans Health Administration (VA) compared to non-VA patients in 2017, when there was concern about the health quality of VA hospitals, and in 2021, the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, both overall, and for specific patient groups. We used data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. In 2017, HCAHPS performance was somewhat better for non-VA than for VA hospitals, with Care Transition being the only measure for which VA hospitals performed better on average.

Mixed Mode Substantially Increases Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Response Rates Relative to Single-Mode Protocols.

Background: Low response rates (RRs) can affect hospitals' data collection costs for patient experience surveys and value-based purchasing eligibility. Most hospitals use single-mode approaches, even though sequential mixed mode (MM) yields higher RRs and perhaps better patient representativeness. Some hospitals may be reluctant to incur MM's potential additional cost and complexity without knowing how much RRs would increase.