Tuberculosis Contact Investigations--United States, 2003-2012.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is transmitted through the air from an infectious patient (index patient) to other persons (contacts) who share space. Exposure to M. tuberculosis can result in tuberculosis (TB) disease or latent TB infection (LTBI), which has no clinical symptoms or radiologic evidence of disease.

Tuberculosis treatment managed by providers outside the Public Health Department: lessons for the Affordable Care Act.

Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) requires at least six months of multidrug treatment and necessitates monitoring for response to treatment. Historically, public health departments (HDs) have cared for most TB patients in the United States. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides coverage for uninsured persons and may increase the proportion of TB patients cared for by private medical providers and other providers outside HDs (PMPs).

Improved outcomes found after implementing a systematic evaluation and program improvement process for tuberculosis.

California's state and local tuberculosis (TB) programs collaborated to develop the Tuberculosis Indicators Project (TIP), a program evaluation and improvement process. In TIP, local and state staff review data, identify program gaps, implement plans to improve local TB program performance, and evaluate outcomes. After 10 years of project implementation, indicator performance changes and patient outcomes were measured.

Developing and using performance measures based on surveillance data for program improvement in tuberculosis control.

California state and local tuberculosis (TB) programs used a systematic process to develop a set of indicators to measure and improve program performance in controlling TB. These indicators were the basis for a quality improvement process known as the TB Indicators Project. Indicators were derived from guidelines and legal mandates for clinical, case management, and surveillance standards and were assessed using established criteria.

Can I find a doctor? Availability of primary care physicians in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Objectives: Primary care physicians function as "gatekeepers" in many managed care systems. With the rapid growth of managed care enrollment, it is crucial that patients have adequate access to primary care physicians. We investigated factors associated with new-patient appointment availability of primary care physicians in the San Francisco Bay Area.