Do Prescription Drug Ads Tell Consumers Enough About Benefits and Side Effects? Results From the Health Information National Trends Survey, Fourth Administration.

Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising (DTCA) is a major source of consumer information about prescription drugs. The present study updates 2002 U.S.

From adversary to partner: have quality improvement organizations made the transition?

Objective: To describe the perceived impact of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) on quality of care for patients hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction, in the context of new efforts to work more collaboratively with hospitals in the pursuit of quality improvement.

Data Source: Primary data collected from a national random sample of 105 hospital quality management directors interviewed between January and July 2002.

Study Design: We interviewed quality management directors concerning their interactions with the QIO interventions, the helpfulness of QIO interventions and the degree to which they helped or hindered their hospital quality efforts, and their recommendations for improving QIO effectiveness.

Validation of self-reported pneumococcal vaccination in behavioral risk factor surveillance surveys: experience from the sickness prevention achieved through regional collaboration (SPARC) program.

Behavioral risk factor surveillance system (BRFSS) is the primary surveillance tool for the ongoing measurement of state-specific delivery of pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. This study is the first validity assessment of self-reported pneumococcal vaccination status in a population-wide BRFSS survey. A subset of respondents to the sickness prevention achieved through regional collaboration (SPARC) BRFSS survey, which was conducted from June to September 1997 in a four-county area were assessed.

Improving the timeliness of written patient notification of mammography results by mammography centers.

Timely reporting of mammogram results helps to reduce anxiety for women with negative results and speeds up diagnosis or treatment in the case of abnormal results. The goal of this project was to improve the rate at which Virginia mammography centers provide a written report to women in lay terms within 30 days of a mammogram. The project included six intervention and five control mammography centers.