March/April 1998, No. 214
Contents
About Research Activities
Feature Story
Fewer than half of schizophrenia patients get proper treatment
Departments
Smoking Cessation
Physician counseling can help patients quit smoking
More intensive smoking cessation efforts by clinicians could greatly
increase the number of smokers who quit each year
People who quit smoking are much less likely to be hospitalized
than those who continue to smoke
Health Care Delivery
Specialists see more privately insured patients than HMO
patients
Organized system of care may improve management of diabetes and
other chronic diseases
Clinical Decisionmaking
Amiodarone reduces deaths by up to 20 percent in patients at risk for
sudden cardiac death
Clinicians advised to reconsider routine use of antibiotics for acute ear
infections
Early bone marrow transplantation is recommended for most patients
with chronic myelogenous leukemia
Outcomes/Effectiveness Research
Prostate PORT publishes recent findings
Cardiologists use more intensive treatments for heart attack patients
than generalist physicians
Studies on the effects of health care organizational changes on clinical
outcomes deserve high research priority
Conference attendees examine the impact of changes in nursing
care on health care delivery and patient outcomes
Health Care Costs and Financing
Millions of American children still lack health insurance and face
barriers to care
More aggressive diagnostic protocols for suspected heart attack
can reduce unnecessary hospitalizations
Medical Liability
Malpractice claims for physician omission are both less common
and more likely to be paid than other malpractice suits
Elderly/Long-term Care
Use of physical restraints in nursing homes has declined, but the
same types of residents are being restrained
Physiological measures alone are insufficient to assess treatment
impact for chronic diseases like Alzheimer's
Studies focus on measuring quality in long-term care
Minority Health
Spanish-speaking Latinos report better health outcomes when their
doctors also speak Spanish
Poor black and white patients use different reference points in
evaluating their health status
Dental Research
Researchers focus attention on children's dental health
Data Development and Use
Researchers describe use of large databases to measure outcomes of
care
AHCPR News and Notes
From the Administrator: Purchasers look to health services research
for the information they need in today's market-driven health care arena
AHCPR encourages researchers to submit applications
Announcements
AHCPR, CDC, AAHP, and the HMO Research Network to host
the fourth annual "Building Bridges" conference
Registry of State-level efforts to integrate health data can be found on
the Internet
New report describes ways to evaluate performance, improve patient
care, and operate more efficiently
NMES data now available on a single CD-ROM
Calling all AHCPR Web site users
Research Briefs
Measurement properties of the short multidimensional observation
scale for elderly subjects (MOSES)
The virtual visit: Using telecommunications technology to take
care of patients
A WWW implementation of national recommendations for
protecting electronic health information
Effectiveness and cost of rapid and conventional laboratory methods
for Mycobacterium tuberculosis screening
Methodological issues in linking costs and health outcomes in
research on differing care delivery systems
Comparison of two surveys of hospitalizations
Utilization and cost of serologic tests for Lyme disease in
Maryland
AHCPR Publication No. 98-0019
Current as of March 1998
Internet Citation:
Research Activities newsletter. March/April 1998, No. 214. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/research/mar98/