Impact of a Graduated Approach on Opioid Initiation and Loss of Earnings Following Workplace Injury: A Time Series Analysis.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the impact of the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board's (WSIB's) graduated approach to opioid management on opioid prescribing and disability claim duration.

Methods: We studied patterns of opioid use and disability claim duration among Ontarians who received benefits through the WSIB between 2002 and 2013. We used interventional time series analysis to assess the impact of the WSIB graduated formulary on these trends.

Pre-Post Evaluation of an Integrated Return to Work Planning Program in Workers' Compensation Assessment Clinics.

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a new workers' compensation medical assessment model on loss of earnings (LOE) benefits duration.

Methods: A medical assessment model was introduced incorporating return to work planning and inclusion of the worker's treating physician. Impact of the program on LOE benefit duration was assessed using a quasi-experimental pre-post study design.

Influence of delays to nonemergent colon cancer surgery on operative mortality, disease-specific survival and overall survival.

BACKGROUND: There has been minimal research on the influence of delays for cancer treatments on patient outcomes. We measured the influence of delays to nonemergent colon cancer surgery on operative mortality, disease-specific survival and overall survival. METHODS: We used the linked Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare databases (1993-1996) to identify patients who underwent nonemergent colon cancer surgery.

Influence of hospital characteristics on operative death and survival of patients after major cancer surgery in Ontario.

Background: There is a lack of information from Canadian hospitals on the role of hospital characteristics such as procedure volume and teaching status on the survival of patients who undergo major cancer resection. Therefore, we chose to study these relationships using data from patients treated in Ontario hospitals.

Methods: We used the Ontario Cancer Registry from calendar years 1990-2000 to obtain data on patients who underwent surgery for breast, colon, lung or esophageal cancer or who underwent major liver surgery related to a cancer diagnosis between 1990 and 1995 in order to assess the influence of volume of procedures and teaching status of hospitals on in-hospital death rate and long-term survival.

Using administrative databases to measure waiting times for patients undergoing major cancer surgery in Ontario, 1993-2000.

Purpose: To determine how long patients in Ontario waited for major breast, colorectal, lung or prostate cancer surgery in the years 1993-2000.

Methods: "Surgical waiting time" was defined as the interval from date of preoperative surgeon consult to date of hospital admission for surgery. We created patient cohorts by linking appropriate diagnosis and procedure codes from Canadian Institutes of Health Information data.

Parkinsonism in Ontario: comorbidity associated with hospitalization in a large cohort.

To study comorbidity in patients with Parkinsonism (PKM), relative hospitalization rates from 1994 to 1999 for 15,304 cases were compared with 30,608 controls. After correction for differential survival, the rates were higher for cases compared to controls for aspiration pneumonia (6.34; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.

Comparison of methods to identify outliers observed in health services small area variation studies.

Small area variation analysis (SAV) is an established methodology in health services and epidemiological research. The goal is to demonstrate that rates differ across areas, and to explain these differences by differences in physician practice styles or patient characteristics. While the SAV statistics provide an overall variation estimate, they do not provide a statistical means to identify significant outliers.

Burden of parkinsonism: a population-based study.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with a significant burden of illness and cost to society, which has been difficult to quantify. Our objective was to use linked administrative databases from the population of Ontario, Canada, to assess the prevalence of parkinsonism, physician- and drug-related costs, and hospital utilization for parkinsonian patients compared with age/sex matched controls. An inception cohort of parkinsonian cases from 1993/1994 was age and sex matched (1:2) to controls and followed for 6 years.