Background Long-term acute care hospitals (LTACs) provide specialized treatment for patients with chronic critical illness. Increasingly LTACs are co-located within traditional short-stay hospitals rather than operated as free-standing facilities, which may affect LTAC utilization patterns and outcomes. Methods We compared free-standing and co-located LTACs using 2005 data from...
Donald M Yealy 0 Judith R Lave 3 0 Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , USA 1 Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University
The Emergency Department (ED) is consistently described as a high-risk environment for patients and clinicians that demands colleagues quickly work together as a cohesive group. Communication between nurses, physicians, and other ED clinicians is complex and difficult to track. A clear understanding of communications in the ED is lacking, which has a potentially negative impact...
OBJECTIVE—To examine medical and mental health care expenditures for large numbers of individuals with diabetes enrolled in employment-sponsored insurance plans. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Health insurance billing data for ∼1.3 million individuals enrolled in health insurance plans sponsored by 862 large self-insured employers nationwide were used to examine employer...
In 1983, the U.S. Congress passed the Social Security Reform Act establishing a prospective payment system (PPS) for hospitals under the Medicare program. PPS represents a radically different approach to paying for care than the retrospective cost-based reimbursement system it replaced. The program pays hospitals a prospectively determined amount for each Medicare patient treated...
Background The pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) remains widely used in acute lung injury (ALI) despite known complications and little evidence of improved short-term mortality. Concurrent with NHLBI ARDS Clinical Trials Network Fluid and Catheters Treatment Trial (FACTT), we conducted a prospectively-defined comparison of healthcare costs and long-term outcomes for care with a PAC...
