Rebecca T. Slifkin

A prospective study of the impact of patient preferences on life-sustaining treatment and hospital cost.

OBJECTIVES Ethicists advise that life-sustaining treatment decisions should be made in keeping with patient preferences. Until recently, there has been little systematic study of the impact of patient preferences on the use of various life-sustaining treatments or the consequent cost of hospital care. This prospective study was designed to answer the following questions: a) Do patient treatment preferences about the use of life-sustaining treatment influence the treatments they receive? and b) Do patient treatment preferences influence the total cost of their hospitalization? DESIGN A prospective, cohort study. SETTING A university teaching hospital. PATIENTS Hospitalized patients, at least 50 yrs of age, with short life expectancy due to end-stage heart, lung, or liver disease, metastatic cancer, or lymphoma. INTERVENTIONS None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Patients were interviewed to determine their desire for life-sustaining treatment and other characteristics and then were followed for 6 months to determine life-sustaining treatment use and costs during hospitalization. Two hundred forty-four patients were interviewed. Fifty-eight percent of patients expressed a desire for life-sustaining treatments to prolong life for 1 wk. During 245 subsequent hospitalizations, there were 20 episodes of mechanical ventilation, 63 episodes of intensive care, and 66 cancer treatments given. Bivariate and multivariate analyses showed no significant association between patient desire to receive treatment to prolong life and either life-sustaining treatment use (p = .59) or hospital costs (p = .20). CONCLUSION In a university teaching hospital setting, there is no systematic evidence that patient preferences determine life-sustaining treatment use or hospital costs.

The Effects of Rural Residence and Other Social Vulnerabilities on Subjective Measures of Unmet Need

To determine whether self-reports of unmet need are biased measures of access to health care, the authors examine the relationship between rural residence and perceived need for physician services. They perform logistic regression analyses to examine the likelihood of reporting a need for routine preventive care and/or specialty care using data from the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. Even after controlling for factors known to be associated with evaluated need, parents of rural children were less likely to report a need for routine or specialty services. Poor children, those whose mothers had less education, and those who were uninsured in the previous year were also less likely to perceive a need for physician services. Findings suggest that rural residence and other social vulnerabilities are associated with decreased perception of need, which may bias subjective measurements of unmet need for these populations.

Continuing effects of Medicare Part D on rural independent pharmacies who are the sole retail provider in their community

BACKGROUND The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 established funding to allow Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in plans providing outpatient prescription drug coverage beginning in January 2006. The Medicare Part D program has changed the means by which beneficiaries purchase prescription drugs, impacting the business operations of pharmacies. OBJECTIVES To describe the experiences of rural independently owned pharmacies that are the sole retail pharmacy in their community 1 year after implementation of Medicare Part D, in order to learn if the initial financial and administrative problems associated with the implementation of the program in 2006 resolved over time. METHODS A semistructured interview protocol was used in telephone interviews with 51 pharmacist owners of rural sole community pharmacies in 27 states who were identified through a random sampling process. RESULTS The sole community pharmacists interviewed continue to face challenges directly related to Medicare Part D. Dealing with Part D plans and working with patients during enrollment periods remains administratively burdensome. Reimbursement amounts, complexity of dealing with multiple plans, and timeliness of payments continue to be cited as problems which could threaten the viability of independently owned pharmacies who are the sole retail providers in their communities. CONCLUSIONS Actions should be considered to help sole community pharmacies deal with the ongoing administrative and financial challenges of Part D. To ensure full choice for rural Medicare beneficiaries and full access to pharmaceuticals through the ongoing presence of a local pharmacy, the development of a mechanism to structure prescription reimbursement so that drug acquisition costs and related overhead are covered and a reasonable profit margin provided should be considered. Further study is needed to determine how existing policies and regulations can be modified to ensure reasonable access to pharmacy services for rural Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

The role of state policies and programs in buffering the effects of poverty on children's immunization receipt.

OBJECTIVES This study assessed the influence of public policies on the immunization status of 2-year old children in the United States. METHODS Up-to-dateness for the primary immunization series was assessed in a national sample of 8100 children from the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey and its 1991 Longitudinal Follow-Up. RESULTS Documented immunization rates of this sample were 33% for poor children and 44% for others. More widespread Medicated coverage was associated with greater likelihood of up-to-dateness among poor children. Up-to-dateness was more likely for poor children with public rather than private sources of routine pediatric care, but all children living in states where most immunizations were delivered in the public sector were less likely to be up to date. Poor children in state with partial vaccine replacement programs were less likely to be up to date than those in free-market purchase states. CONCLUSIONS While state policies can enhance immunization delivery for poor children, heavy reliance on public sector immunization does not ensure timely receipt of vaccines. Public- and private-sector collaboration is necessary to protect children from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Recruitment and retention in rural and urban EMS: results from a national survey of local EMS directors.

Maintaining an adequate staff is a challenge for rural emergency medical services (EMS) providers. This national survey of local EMS directors finds that rural EMS are more likely to be freestanding, that is, not affiliated with other public services, to employ only emergency medical technician-basics (EMT-Bs), and to be all volunteer. Rural EMS directors are more likely than urban ones to report that they are not currently fully staffed. The most common barriers to recruitment of EMTs in both urban and rural areas include unwillingness of community members to volunteer and lack of certified EMTs in the area. In rural areas, barriers to EMT training were noted more often than in urban areas as was the lack of employer support for employee volunteers. Similar rural training barriers affected retention of staff. Rural respondents reported that they lose staff to burnout and to difficulty in meeting continuing education requirements. Among rural respondents, those who direct all-volunteer EMS were the most likely to report recruitment and retention problems. The results suggest areas for further study including how volunteer EMS agencies can transition to paid agencies, how to bring EMS education to rural areas, and how EMS can work with other agencies to ensure EMS viability.

Designated Medical Directors for Emergency Medical Services: Recruitment and Roles.

CONTEXT Emergency medical services (EMS) agencies rely on medical oversight to support Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) in the provision of prehospital care. Most states require EMS agencies to have a designated medical director (DMD), who typically is responsible for the many activities of medical oversight. PURPOSE To assess rural-urban differences in obtaining a DMD and in their responsibilities. METHODS A national survey of 1,425 local EMS directors, conducted in 2007. FINDINGS Rural EMS directors were more likely than urban ones to report DMD recruitment problems, but recruitment barriers were similar, with the most commonly reported barrier being an unwillingness of local physicians to serve. Rural EMS directors reported that their DMDs were less likely to be trained in Emergency Medicine, and were less likely to provide educational support functions such as continuing education. Rural agencies were more likely to get on-line medical direction from their DMD, but were less likely to always get the on-line support they needed. Common barriers to on-line support were typical of rural communication barriers. CONCLUSIONS Existing recommendations for DMD qualifications may be difficult to attain in rural communities. To develop programs that will support medical direction for rural EMS agencies, it is important to learn what physicians identify as the barriers to serving as DMDs, and whether there are alternative and innovative ways to provide an optimal level of medical oversight. Solutions will likely be multi-faceted, as EMS activities and organizational structures are diverse and the responsibilities of the DMD are broad.

Costs of developing childhood immunization registries: case studies from four All Kids Count projects.

We conducted case studies using structured interviews at four sites to understand the financial resources needed to implement childhood immunization registries. The total cost of planning and implementing a central registry ranged from

The Structure and Experience of State Risk Pools: 1988-1994

2.4 million to almost

Migration of Obstetrician-Gynecologists into and out of Rural Areas, 1985 to 1990

7 million over the first five years. In addition, substantial investment by individual or group providers often was required. Registries are large information systems that require considerable investment of developmental resources, regardless of the number of children eventually entered into the system. Given the substantial investment that a registry represents, the realistic anticipation of such resource needs is important to successful planning and implementation.

What does the clinical doctorate in physical therapy mean for rural communities

State risk pools are state-sponsored plans for persons who want to buy health insurance but are medically uninsurable or unable to find policies at reasonable cost. This article reviews the structure of all pools and describes in more detail the experiences of eight pools. Although pools grew in number and size in the late 1980s, most pools subsequently stabilized in size. The eight risk pools studied had high enrollee turnover; and a small proportion of enrollees accounted for a large proportion of expenditures. All pools experienced losses, and the current methods of financing losses embody undesirable incentives. Continued use or expansion of these pools may require broader methods of covering losses.