Background: Medical visits are initiated by patients in search of symptom relief. The extent to which obesity independently increases the risk of common symptoms is unknown. Objectives: To assess how obesity affects symptom burden among family medicine patients, after adjustment for severity of...

Background: Primary care providers may refer their patients to a variety of weight loss programs and diet plans. However, the relative effectiveness of the available options is not well understood. This retrospective study compared weight loss in an intensive structured (IS) program using health...

Background: Controlling the number of medical visits consumed by primary care patients is essential to cost containment; therefore, identification of patients likely to be frequent users of medical visits is required. Obesity has not often been used as a marker for selecting patients for disease...

Background: Pain assessment and control have received increasing attention as a quality issue in medicine. However, pain has rarely been addressed as a cost-containment issue. Methods: We performed a single-center retrospective analysis of information abstracted from the medical records of 1445...

This paper examines the relationship between the future staff cost of nursing home patient care and the type and level of nursing and medical services these patients receive. Nursing times are grouped into eight categories based on a principal components analysis. We then investigate the effect...

In this exploratory analysis using data on 290 patients, we use regression analysis to model patient outcomes in two Veterans Administration nursing homes. We find resource use, as measured with minutes of nursing time, to be associated with outcomes when case mix is controlled. Our results...

Many of the residents of nursing homes have mental health problems. These can be expected to affect the quantity of nursing care they require. Analysis of 285 nursing home residents, most of whom had moderate behavioral problems, reveals that their mental health characteristics can be summarized...