Wennberg proposed the “practice style factor” to explain the large variations in the use of medical care. As a corollary, we propose the “leadership style factor” of the director of the city/county bureau of public health to explain changes in geographic variation in the uptake of...

Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Preventive care practices—such as dilated eye exams and control of blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol—can help avoid severe complications of the disease. This report for the Maryland Health Care...

By 1993, over 70 of all Americans with health insurance were enrolled in some form of managed care plan. The term managed care encompasses a diverse array of institutional arrangements, which combine various sets of mechanisms, that, in turn, have changed over time. The chapter reviews these...