Effects of race and income on mortality and use of services among Medicare beneficiaries.

Background: There are wide disparities between blacks and whites in the use of many Medicare services. We studied the effects of race and income on mortality and use of services.

Methods: We linked 1990 census data on median income according to ZIP Code with 1993 Medicare administrative data for 26.

An analysis of utilization and access from the NHIS: 1984-92.

While the aged as a group have better access to health care since the inception of Medicare, there are subsets of the population that are still vulnerable to large out-of-pocket expenses. The focus of this analysis is on those segments of the Medicare population which are particularly vulnerable to access problems due to their personal characteristics. In particular, using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), this article will focus on the simultaneous influence of personal characteristics, such as insurance status, income, health status, and race on the use of physician services by the elderly population.

Overview.

This overview discusses articles published in this issue of the , entitled "Access to Health Services for Vulnerable Populations." These articles focus on the following topics: access to Medicaid for pregnant women, access measures by health status, racial access questions, end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients, other special populations, and the effects of physician payment reform.

Medicare beneficiaries: adverse outcomes after hospitalization for eight procedures.

Rehospitalization following surgery is widely recognized as an important outcome measure. The purpose of this study was to identify rehospitalizations for adverse events following 8 procedures, using diagnosis and procedure codes contained in Medicare claims files. Adverse events were broadly defined as: 1) complications; 2) failure of the procedure to achieve its therapeutic goal; and 3) untoward events associated with the natural history of the disease being treated with the procedure.