Outpatient visits before and after Lyme disease diagnosis in a Maryland employer-based health plan.

Background: Insurance claims data have been used to inform an understanding of Lyme disease epidemiology and cost of care, however few such studies have incorporated post-treatment symptoms following diagnosis. Using longitudinal data from a private, employer-based health plan in an endemic US state, we compared outpatient care utilization pre- and post-Lyme disease diagnosis. We hypothesized that utilization would be higher in the post-diagnosis period, and that temporal trends would differ by age and gender.

Distributed Caregiving for Cognitively Impaired Individuals: A Case Report.

Many caregivers of people with cognitive impairment spend a significant amount of their time helping patients with instrumental daily functions. Distributed caregiving is an innovative model designed to reduce an individual caregiver's time burden and increase the likelihood of continued independent living for the patient. Echo Show and Google Home platforms were used to enable the participation of remote family members in caregiving, specifically the socialization and entertainment of a person with cognitive impairment.

Incidence of Lyme Disease Diagnosis in a Maryland Medicaid Population, 2004-2011.

The epidemiology of Lyme disease has been examined utilizing insurance claims from privately insured individuals; however, it is unknown whether reported patterns vary among the publicly insured. We examined trends in incidence rates of first Lyme disease diagnosis among 384,652 Maryland Medicaid recipients enrolled from July 2004 to June 2011. Age-, sex-, county-, season-, and year-specific incidence rates were calculated, and mixed-effects multiple logistic regression models were used to study the relationship between Lyme disease diagnosis and these variables.

Development and applications of an outcomes assessment framework for care management programs in learning health systems.

Purpose: To develop and apply an outcomes assessment framework (OAF) for care management programs in health care delivery settings.

Background: Care management (CM) refers to a regimen of organized activities that are designed to promote health in a population with particular chronic conditions or risk profiles, with focus on the triple aim for populations: improving the quality of care, advancing health outcomes, and lowering health care costs. CM has become an integral part of a care continuum for population-based health care management.

Using sentiment analysis to review patient satisfaction data located on the internet.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the usefulness of sentiment analysis and time-to-next-complaint methods in quantifying text-based information located on the internet. As important, the authors demonstrate how managers can use time-to-next-complaint techniques to organize sentiment analysis derived data into useful information, which can be shared with doctors and other staff.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors used sentiment analysis to review patient feedback for a select group of gynecologists in Virginia.