Priority access to health care: Evidence from an exogenous policy shock.

Access to care is an important issue in public health care systems. Unlike private systems, in which price equilibrates supply and demand, public systems often ration medical services through wait times. Access that is given on a first come, first served basis might not yield an allocation of resources that maximizes the health of a population, potentially creating suboptimal heterogeneity in wait times.

The effects of global budget payments on hospital utilization in rural Maryland.

Objective: To assess the effect of Maryland's 2010 Total Patient Revenue (TPR) global budget reform in eight rural hospitals on population-level hospital rates of utilization three years after implementation.

Data Sources/study Setting: Data on all inpatient discharges and outpatient department visits from the Health Services Cost Review Commission, population data from Claritas Demographic Reports, and county-level data from the Area Health Resource File.

Study Design: We use a difference-in-differences approach to compare changes in utilization rates over time in the reform areas comprising 125 Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) and in two control hospital areas (66 ZCTAs and 327 ZCTAs, respectively).

study: protocol for a stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial to compare access to care for a mobile app versus a workstation-based store-and-forward teledermatology process.

Introduction: Teledermatology has emerged as an important strategy to enhance access to high-quality skin care. is a provider-facing, web-based mobile app designed to integrate into the existing teledermatology workflow in the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA). In this study, we will conduct a systematic evaluation of on access outcomes in VHA facilities using a pragmatic trial guided by clinical and operational leaders.

Guideline-concordant initiation of oral anticoagulant therapy for stroke prevention in older veterans with atrial fibrillation eligible for Medicare Part D.

Objective: To characterize the rate of guideline-concordant initiation of oral anticoagulation (OAC) among elderly Veterans with atrial fibrillation (AF) and high stroke risk.

Data Sources/study Setting: Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) linked with Medicare claims 2011-2015.

Study Design: We identified 6619 elderly, high stroke-risk patients with a new episode of AF initially diagnosed in the VHA during fiscal years 2012-2015.

Social Media and the Dissemination of Research: Insights from the Most Widely Circulated Articles in Plastic Surgery.

Background: The purpose of this study is to quantify the relationship between social media use and the dissemination of research across nontraditional channels.

Methods: Between June and August of 2016, the authors identified 10 plastic surgery journals with the highest impact factor and their 10 most widely circulated articles. Article age; journal impact factor; "distinguished" article designation; and social media metadata of the first authors, last authors, and journals were incorporated into a multivariate regression model to predict the Altmetric Attention Score, a quantitative measure of popularity across Web-based media platforms.