Expedited Medicaid Enrollment, Mental Health Service Use, and Criminal Recidivism Among Released Prisoners With Severe Mental Illness.

Objective: This study investigated whether Washington State's 2006 policy of expediting Medicaid enrollment for offenders with severe mental illness released from state prisons increased Medicaid access and use of community mental health services while decreasing criminal recidivism.

Methods: A quasi-experimental design with linked administrative data was used to select all prisoners with a severe mental illness (schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) released during the policy's first two years (January 1, 2006, through December 31, 2007), and those referred for expedited Medicaid (N=895) were separated from a propensity-weighted control group of those not referred (N=2,191). Measures included binary indicators of Medicaid enrollment, other public insurance enrollment, postrelease use of inpatient and outpatient health services, and any postrelease criminal justice contacts.

Examination of Parent Insurance Ratings, Child Expenditures, and Financial Burden Among Children With Autism: A Mismatch Suggests New Hypotheses to Test.

Objective: Families raising children with autism contribute significant amounts to the cost of care. In this era of health care reform, families have more insurance choices, but people are unfamiliar with health insurance terms. This study uses 2 national data sets to examine health insurance ratings from parents raising children with autism and child expenditures to explore how these measures align.

Documentary analysis of risk-assessment and safety-planning policies and tools in a mental health context.

Despite the articulated need for policies and processes to guide risk assessment and safety planning, limited guidance exists on the processes or procedures to be used to develop such policies, and there is no body of research that examines the quality or content of the risk-management policies developed. The aim of the present study was to analyse the policies of risk and safety management used to guide mental health nursing practice in Ireland. A documentary analysis was performed on 123 documents received from 22 of the 23 directors of nursing contacted.

Do primary care medical homes facilitate care transitions after psychiatric discharge for patients with multiple chronic conditions?

Objective: Primary-care-based medical homes may facilitate care transitions for persons with multiple chronic conditions (MCC) including serious mental illness. The purpose of this manuscript is to assess outpatient follow-up rates with primary care and mental health providers following psychiatric discharge by medical home enrollment and medical complexity.

Methods: Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined data from North Carolina Medicaid-enrolled adults with MCC hospitalized with an inpatient diagnosis of depression or schizophrenia during 2008-2010.

Cybersecurity: The heat is on.

Breaches of confidential patient information are proliferating and the culprits are more sophisticated and sinister than ever. Hospitals and health systems are using smarter and faster tactics to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

There is more to risk and safety planning than dramatic risks: Mental health nurses' risk assessment and safety-management practice.

Risk assessment and safety planning are considered a cornerstone of mental health practice, yet limited research exists into how mental health nurses conceptualize 'risk' and how they engage with risk assessment and safety planning. The aim of the present study was to explore mental health nurses' practices and confidence in risk assessment and safety planning. A self-completed survey was administered to 381 mental health nurses in Ireland.

Colloidal Confinement of Polyphosphate on Gold Nanoparticles Robustly Activates the Contact Pathway of Blood Coagulation.

Platelet-sized polyphosphate (polyP) was functionalized on the surface of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) via a facile conjugation scheme entailing EDAC (N-(3-(dimethylamino)propyl)-N'-ethylcarbodiimide hydrochloride)-catalyzed phosphoramidation of the terminal phosphate of polyP to cystamine. Subsequent reduction of the disulfide moiety allowed for anchoring to the colloidal surface. The ability of the synthesized polyP-GNPs to initiate the contact pathway of clotting in human pooled normal plasma (PNP) was then assayed by quantifying changes in viscous, mechanical, and optical properties upon coagulation.

Increasing Access to State Psychiatric Hospital Beds: Exploring Supply-Side Solutions.

Objective: The objective of this study was to identify supply-side interventions to reduce state psychiatric hospital admission delays.

Methods: Healthcare Enterprise Accounts Receivable Tracking System (HEARTS) data were collected for all patients admitted between July 1, 2010, and July 31, 2012, to one of North Carolina's three state-operated psychiatric hospitals (N=3,156). Additional information on hospital use was collected at nine meetings with hospital administrators and other local stakeholders.

The Cost of Value-based Care.

Population health requires sophisticated systems that link payer, financial and clinical data. Prepare to spend even more on IT.

Central role for ferritin in the day/night regulation of iron homeostasis in marine phytoplankton.

In large regions of the open ocean, iron is a limiting resource for phytoplankton. The reduction of iron quota and the recycling of internal iron pools are among the diverse strategies that phytoplankton have evolved to allow them to grow under chronically low ambient iron levels. Phytoplankton species also have evolved strategies to cope with sporadic iron supply such as long-term storage of iron in ferritin.

Peptide Functionalized Gold Nanorods for the Sensitive Detection of a Cardiac Biomarker Using Plasmonic Paper Devices.

The sensitivity of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of metal nanostructures to adsorbates lends itself to a powerful class of label-free biosensors. Optical properties of plasmonic nanostructures are dependent on the geometrical features and the local dielectric environment. The exponential decay of the sensitivity from the surface of the plasmonic nanotransducer calls for the careful consideration in its design with particular attention to the size of the recognition and analyte layers.

Co-occurence of filamentation defects and impaired biofilms in Candida albicans protein kinase mutants.

Pathogenicity of Candida albicans is linked with its developmental stages, notably the capacity switch from yeast-like to hyphal growth, and to form biofilms on surfaces. To better understand the cellular processes involved in C. albicans development, a collection of 63 C.

Structure-Function Relationship of the Interaction between Tissue Factor and Factor VIIa.

Interactions between tissue factor and factor VIIa are the primary initiators of coagulation in hemostasis and certain thrombotic diseases. Tissue factor, an integral membrane protein expressed extensively outside of the vasculature, is the regulatory protein cofactor for coagulation factor VIIa. Factor VIIa, a trypsin-like serine protease homologous with other blood coagulation proteases, is weakly active when free in solution and must bind its membrane-bound cofactor for physiologically relevant activity.

Experimental Protein Structure Verification by Scoring with a Single, Unassigned NMR Spectrum.

Standard methods for de novo protein structure determination by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) require time-consuming data collection and interpretation efforts. Here we present a qualitatively distinct and novel approach, called Comparative, Objective Measurement of Protein Architectures by Scoring Shifts (COMPASS), which identifies the best structures from a set of structural models by numerical comparison with a single, unassigned 2D (13)C-(13)C NMR spectrum containing backbone and side-chain aliphatic signals. COMPASS does not require resonance assignments.

The effect of family and friend support on physical activity through adolescence: a longitudinal study.

Background: This study examined if family and friend support predicted adolescent physical activity (PA) across a five-year time span.

Methods: The Iowa Bone Development Study collected objective measures of physical activity and self-report of physical activity psychosocial factors at ages 13 (n = 306), 15 (n = 356), and 17 yr (n = 317). Total moderate and vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA) and MVPA after 3 pm on weekdays (MVPA-PM Weekday) were measured using ActiGraph accelerometers.

THE BATTLE OVER PATIENT DATA. How to secure your access.

Who owns patient data in an electronic health record (EHR)? It's a simple question with a complex answer. No longer confined to the shelves of a physician's office, patient data is now shared and used by a myriad of organizations across healthcare: Other physicians and health systems, the EHR vendor, payers, and researchers, not to mention patients themselves. While primary care physicians often originate the medical record, the resulting data are not theirs alone.

Evaluation of Urine Aquaporin-1 and Perilipin-2 Concentrations as Biomarkers to Screen for Renal Cell Carcinoma: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Importance: Historically, early detection of small asymptomatic kidney tumors presages better patient outcome. Screening for asymptomatic renal tumors by abdominal imaging is not cost-effective and cannot reliably distinguish benign from malignant tumors.

Objective: This investigation evaluated the clinical utility, sensitivity, and specificity of urine aquaporin-1 (AQP1) and perilipin-2 (PLIN2) concentrations as unique, noninvasive biomarkers to diagnose malignant clear cell or papillary renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in a screening paradigm.