Objectives: To evaluate the relationship of hospice profit status to patient selection and service delivery.
Design: We analyzed responses to the 1997 California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) annual home care and hospice survey. Outcomes included the percentages of patients with noncancer diagnoses, referred from long-term care, and with government payers; average length of stay (LOS); the intensity and skill mix of nursing services; and potential availability of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Reduced models controlled for facility type, profit status, urbanicity, and patient-days. Complete models additionally controlled for patient gender, age, race/ethnicity, diagnosis, referral source, and primary reimbursement source.
Participants: All 176 licensed California hospices in 1997.
Results: We report comparisons of for-profit and not-for-profit hospices as the absolute difference in percentage points between outcomes (e.g., a difference of 40% vs. 50% is reported as a 10 percentage point difference). In reduced models, for-profit hospices reported 17 percentage points more discharges with noncancer diagnoses, 15 percentage points more long-term care referrals, and 8 percentage points more patients with government payers. Average LOS did not differ by profit status. In reduced models, for-profit hospices delivered 0.20 more daily nursing visits on average; this difference was attributable to patient characteristics. The ratio of skilled to total nursing visits was 11 percentage points lower for for-profit hospices compared to not-for-profit hospices in reduced models (7 in complete models). Profit status was unrelated to the potential availability of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Conclusion: For-profit hospices compared to not-for profit hospices serve a higher percentage of persons with noncancer diagnoses, residents of long-term care, and persons with government insurance. Differences in patterns of nursing services among hospices were related to patient characteristics. The potential availability of complex palliative services did not differ by profit status.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/109662102760269742 | DOI Listing |
Clin Optom (Auckl)
December 2024
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 01609, USA.
Purpose: Retrospective study to review scleral lens outcomes in the pediatric population over a 21-year period, at a single clinical center.
Results: A total of 209 pediatric eyes (108 males and 101 females), distributed between 97 right and 112 left eyes, of which 147 eyes had ocular surface disease and 62 eyes had irregular cornea/refractive conditions, were treated with scleral lenses over a 21-year period. The mean age at the time of treatment initiation was 10.
Cancer Treat Rev
December 2024
Department of Medicine I, Division of Oncology, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Electronic address:
Neuroendocrine tumors (NET) of the lung are a slowly growing subtype of lung cancer that has a different treatment paradigm than aggressive and more common forms of lung neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN) like small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Current guidelines for metastatic lung NET advocate a handful of treatment options, including somatostatin analogs (SSA), everolimus, temozolomide- or platin-based chemotherapy, and peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT). However, there is no clear treatment sequence, and the therapy of choice may depend on several factors such as tumor grade / growth rate, tumor burden / symptoms, disease progression status, and somatostatin receptor (SSTR) expression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFam Community Health
January 2025
Author Affiliations: Department of Health and Sport Sciences (Dr King, Dr O'Neal), School of Public Health and Information Sciences, Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences (Dr Brown, Dr Elmore), Department of Communications (Dr Della), School of Nursing (Dr Hartson), University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky; University of Cincinnati, School of Social Work (Dr Bloomer), Cincinnati, Ohio; Jefferson County Public Schools (Ms Perez), Louisville, Kentucky; and Food Literacy Project, Inc. (Ms Gundersen), Louisville, Kentucky.
Background And Objectives: Community-based organizations, such as Food Literacy Project, Inc. (FLP), focused on cultivating food justice through increasing access to healthy foods in under-resourced areas are uniquely positioned to positively affect the nutrition landscape. This article reports on an evaluation of FLP's efforts in implementing food justice programming.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMJ Open
January 2025
Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Objectives: This study investigated the autopsy rate of hospital deaths in Shenzhen megacity and identified factors that may impact the decision to perform an autopsy in hospital deaths.
Design: This is a population-based retrospective cohort study.
Setting: Shenzhen is a megacity in China with a population of more than 17 million and a total of 151 hospitals.
Life (Basel)
December 2024
Institute of Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics, Department of Physiology, Health Sciences University Center, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara 44340, Jalisco, Mexico.
Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) is the most severe complication of chronic hyperglycaemi stimulates oxidative stress that changes the retinal basement membrane function and provokes neovascularization, macular edema and retinal detachment. But an oxidative-antioxidant biomarker assessment in ocular matrices, such as aqueous humor (AH) and vitreous, might show the oxidative stress (OS) status in the posterior segment. Here, we show a cross-sectional analytical study of 39 patients who had a vitrectomy and assess the levels of different oxidative-antioxidant biomarkers in blood, aqueous and vitreous humor in three groups: diabetes mellitus 2 (DM2) with PDR [DM(+)PDR(+)] ( =13), DM2 without PDR [DM(+)PDR(-)] ( = 13) and non-DM2 non-PDR [DM(-)PDR(-)] as the control group ( = 13).
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