Trust in the Health System and COVID-19 Treatment.

COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mostly unprepared to combat the virus because of limited resources. The problems in LMICs are exacerbated by the fact that citizens in these countries generally exhibit low trust in the healthcare system because of its low quality, which could trigger a number of uncooperative behaviors.

Political Narratives and the US Partisan Gender Gap.

Social scientists have devoted considerable research effort to investigate the determinants of the Partisan Gender Gap (PGG), whereby US women (men) tend to exhibit more liberal (conservative) political preferences over time. Results of a survey experiment run during the COVID-19 emergency and involving 3,086 US residents show that exposing subjects to alternative narratives on the causes of the pandemic increases the PGG: relative to a baseline treatment in which no narrative manipulation is implemented, exposing subjects to either the (claiming that COVID-19 was caused by a lab accident in Wuhan) or the (according to which COVID-19 originated in the wildlife) makes women more liberal. The polarization effect documented in our experiment is magnified by the political orientation of participants' state of residence: the largest PGG effect is between men residing in Republican-leaning states and women living in Democratic-leaning states.

Change and Innovation in Healthcare: Findings from Literature.

Background: Change is an ongoing process in any organizations. Over years, healthcare organizations have been exposed to multiple external stimuli to change (eg, ageing population, increasing incidence of chronic diseases, ongoing Sars-Cov-2 pandemic) that pointed out the need to convert the current healthcare organizational model. Nowadays, the topic is extremely relevant, rendering organizational change an urgency.

Cost of Relapse Management in Patients with Schizophrenia in Italy and Spain: Comparison Between Lurasidone and Quetiapine XR.

Background And Objective: Schizophrenia is a low-prevalence mental disorder with a global age-standardized prevalence of 21 million people (2016). Second-generation antipsychotics (lurasidone and quetiapine XR) are recommended as the first-line treatment for schizophrenia. It is interesting to investigate how the results of clinical studies translate into direct medical costs.

Early alert from the microbiology laboratory improves the outcome of elderly patients with Enterococcus spp. bloodstream infection: Results from a multicentre prospective study.

Objectives: This study describes the clinical features and outcomes of patients with bloodstream infection (BSI) due to Enterococcus spp. and identified factors predictive of mortality.

Methods: This analysis is part of a prospective multicentre observational study of consecutive hospitalised patients with BSI conducted from March 2012 to December 2012 in 31 internal medicine wards in Italy.

Predicting resistant etiology in hospitalized patients with blood cultures positive for Gram-negative bacilli.

Objective: To develop a risk-scoring tool to predict multidrug-resistant (MDR) etiology in patients with bloodstream infections (BSI) caused by Gram-negative bacilli (GNB).

Methods: A prospective multicenter study analyzed patients with BSI hospitalized in 31 Internal Medicine wards in Italy from March 2012 to December 2012. Patients with BSI caused by MDR-GNB (non-susceptible to at least one agent in three antimicrobial categories) were compared to those with BSI due to susceptible GNB.

TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT IN HOSPITALS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM AN EMPIRICAL EXPERIMENT.

Objectives: Hospital Based Health Technology Assessment (HBHTA) practices, to inform decision making at the hospital level, emerged as urgent priority for policy makers, hospital managers, and professionals. The present study crystallized the results achieved by the testing of an original framework for HBHTA, developed within Lombardy Region: the IMPlementation of A Quick hospital-based HTA (IMPAQHTA). The study tested: (i) the HBHTA framework efficiency, (ii) feasibility, (iii) the tool utility and completeness, considering dimensions and sub-dimensions.

Clinical Features, Short-Term Mortality, and Prognostic Risk Factors of Septic Patients Admitted to Internal Medicine Units: Results of an Italian Multicenter Prospective Study.

Only a few studies provided data on the clinical history of sepsis within internal Medicine units. The aim of the study was to assess the short-term mortality and to evaluate the prognostic risk factors in a large cohort of septic patients treated in internal medicine units. Thirty-one internal medicine units participated to the study.

Cost-utility analysis of lopinavir/ritonavir versus atazanavir + ritonavir administered as first-line therapy for the treatment of HIV infection in Italy: from randomised trial to real world.

Objective: To estimate the lifetime cost utility of two antiretroviral regimens (once-daily atazanavir plus ritonavir [ATV+r] versus twice-daily lopinavir/ritonavir [LPV/r]) in Italian human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients naïve to treatment.

Design: With this observational retrospective study we collected the clinical data of a cohort of HIV-infected patients receiving first-line treatment with LPV/r or ATV+r.

Methodology: A Markov microsimulation model including direct costs and health outcomes of first- and second-line highly active retroviral therapy was developed from a third-party (Italian National Healthcare Service) payer's perspective.