Addressing social determinants to improve healthcare quality and reduce cost.

Unlabelled: Most healthcare quality improvement and cost reduction efforts currently focus on care processes, or transitions-for example, the hospital discharge process. While identification and adoption of best practices to address these aspects of healthcare are essential, more is needed for systems that serve vulnerable populations: to account for social factors that often inhibit patients' ability to take full advantage of available healthcare. Our urban safety net healthcare system developed and implemented an innovative quality improvement approach.

The association of complementary and alternative medicine use and health care expenditures for back and neck problems.

Background: Health care costs associated with use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by patients with spine problems have not been studied in a national sample.

Objectives: To estimate the total and spine-specific medical expenditures among CAM and non-CAM users with spine problems.

Research Design: Analysis of the 2002-2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.

Effect of risk adjustment method on comparisons of health care utilization between complementary and alternative medicine users and nonusers.

Objectives: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers are becoming more integrated into the United States health care system. Because patients self-select CAM use, risk adjustment is needed to make the groups more comparable when analyzing utilization. This study examined how the choice of risk adjustment method affects assessment of CAM use on overall health care utilization.

The management of chronic diseases in rural Missouri practices.

This qualitative study describes the challenges of managing chronic diseases in small, rural, health care practices in Missouri. Four recurrent themes were identified from each of the nine focus groups: the similarity of their patient population and community characteristics, their unfamiliarity with aspects of the chronic care model, the consistent problem of poverty as a barrier to health care access for patients, and the uncertainty about what health care reform will mean for rural practice settings.

The water vapour self- and water-nitrogen continuum absorption in the 1000 and 2500 cm(-1) atmospheric windows.

The pure water vapour and water-nitrogen continuum absorption in the 1000 and 2500 cm(-1) atmospheric windows has been studied using a 2 m base-length White-type multi-pass cell coupled with a BOMEM DA3-002 Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. The measurements were carried out at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, Gaithersburg, MD) over the course of several years (2004, 2006-2007, 2009). New data on the H(2)O:N(2) continuum in the 1000 cm(-1) window are presented and summarized along with the other experimental results and the continuum model.