Oncologists' Views on Using Value to Guide Cancer Treatment Decisions.

Objectives: Cancer costs have increased substantially in the past decades, prompting specialty societies to urge oncologists to consider value in clinical decision making. Despite oncologists' crucial role in guiding cancer care, current literature is sparse with respect to the oncologists' views on value. Here, we evaluated oncologists perceptions of the use and measurement of value in cancer care.

Quality Of End-Of-Life Care Is Higher In The VA Compared To Care Paid For By Traditional Medicare.

Congressional and Veterans Affairs (VA) leaders have recommended the VA become more of a purchaser than a provider of health care. Fee-for-service Medicare provides an example of how purchased care differs from the VA's directly provided care. Using established indicators of overly intensive end-of-life care, we compared the quality of care provided through the two systems to veterans dying of cancer in fiscal years 2010-14.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans' Use of Veterans Health Administration and Purchased Care Before and After Veterans Choice Program Implementation.

Background: The Veterans Choice Program (VCP), enacted by Congress after concerns surfaced about access, enables veterans to receive care outside Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities. Veterans who face long wait times, large driving distances, or particular hardships are eligible for VCP. Prior purchased care programs were comparatively limited in scope.

What do public housing residents say about their health?

Background: Residents of public housing have poorer health indicators than comparably resourced individuals from the larger community.

Objectives: To identify major health concerns, issues, and barriers to health of community members living in public housing developments, especially as related to cardiovascular disease prevention. To identify similarities and differences between data collected using two methods to inform future health promotion programs and policies.

Connecting Boston's public housing developments to community health centers: who's ready for change?

Background: Despite close proximity to community health centers, public housing residents are at increased risk of uncontrolled chronic disease, in part because of underutilization of routine health care.

Objectives: To assist in program planning, the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center (PHH-PRC) used the Community Readiness Model to compare readiness of public housing developments and community health centers to address community-identified health priorities. The model assumes that program success to affect change depends on matching the community's level of readiness to address the issue.

Feasibility of chronic disease patient navigation in an urban primary care practice.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating chronic disease navigation using lay health care workers trained in motivational interviewing (MI) into an existing mammography navigation program. Primary-care patient navigators implemented MI-based telephone conversations around mammography, smoking, depression, and obesity. We conducted a small-scale demonstration, using mixed methods to assess patient outcomes and provider satisfaction.

Assessing the impact of patient navigation: prevention and early detection metrics.

Background: The lack of comparable metrics to evaluate prevention and early detection patient navigation programs impeded the ability to identify best practices.

Methods: The Prevention and Early Detection Workgroup of the Patient Navigation Leadership Summit was charged with making recommendations for common clinical metrics specific to the prevention and early detection phase of the cancer care continuum. The workgroup began with a review of existing literature to characterize variability in published navigation metrics; then developed a list of priority recommendations that would be applicable to the range of navigation settings (clinical, academic, or community-based).