Anne E. Fortune

More Is Not Better— Manuscript Reviewer Competence and Citations: From the Past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Work Education

The competence of a journal’s referees or reviewers is a critical issue in any discipline. Referees who review manuscripts for a journal, along with the editors who make final decisions about publication, serve as gatekeepers of information and advancement of knowledge in the discipline. They must, as Pardeck (1992 [this issue]) notes, &dquo;have appropriate research and practice skills.&dquo; In addition, they must be familiar with the discipline, to know what is within its purview. They must have a conceptual ability and breadth beyond their own expertise, to know what is innovative. They must have a sense of

Cost Outcomes and Social Work Practice

In response to escalating health care costs, especially costs for which Medicare and Medicaid are the primary payers, government officials, policy makers, and health administrators have placed increasing pressure on health care providers and mental health providers to answer the following question: What is the relationship between the cost of the services provided and the benefit to the consumers receiving it? In other words, can health and mental health providers demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the services they provide to consumers? Answers to these questions are increasingly used to determine reimbursement structures for private insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare. Therefore, evidence about the costeffectiveness of social work interventions is needed to convince government officials, policy makers, and health administrators that these services are essential. For this reason, the use of economic analysis to examine the efficacy of social work practice is the focus of this special issue. What is cost-effectiveness analysis? Several methods for the economic evaluation of health and mental health interventions exist, including cost-identification analysis, cost-utility analysis, cost-benefit analysis, cost-consequences analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis (Drummond, O’Brien, Stoddart, & Torrance; Neumann, 2005). However, the evaluation method receiving the most attention of late is cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). Its prominence is a result of the recommendations of The United States Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine (Weinstein, Siegel, Gold, Kamlet, & Russell, 1996) and the fact sheet entitled, “Focus on Cost Effectiveness Analysis at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality” (AHRQ; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Services (USDHHS/PHS), 2001). CEA is the recommended economic evaluation method because