Objectives: To identify the asthma prevalence rate, the total healthcare and asthma-related treatment costs, and the medical and pharmacy costs associated with different asthma medication usage patterns in a managed-care organisation (MCO). Study design and participants: The medical and pharmacy...

Background: Concerns regarding the effectiveness and impact of disease management are largely based on disease compliance measures. Although disease management programs have measured improvements in compliance and quality of life and cost savings from reductions in hospitalizations and emergency...

Objective: To determine whether the increased acquisition costs associated with the atypical antipsychotic risperidone are offset by reductions in other mental health care utilisation and expenditure. Design and setting: The study was population-based and used South Carolina Medicaid claims data...

Background: To meet the challenge of an aging population, providers and payors must optimize chronic wound care outcomes and contain costs. Objective: To explore the costs, outcomes, and effects of outcomes on costs of pressure and venous ulcer woundcare protocols. Design: Modeling study using...

Galantamine is one of several orally administered cholinesterase inhibitors that improve cognition in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Compared with placebo, galantamine 16 or 24 mg/day improved cognition and activities of daily living, delayed emergence of behavioral symptoms...

According to the WHO, approximately 350 million people have chronic hepatitis B. Individuals with chronic hepatitis B have a highly variable and unpredictable clinical course and are at risk for developing cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Lamivudine is the only oral antiviral agent...

Objective: To develop and implement a quality assessment instrument to evaluate cost estimates in economic evaluation studies. Design and setting: The assessment instrument was devised through a consensus process. The instrument was developed in the process of estimating a national set of...

Objective: To compare various strategies for antibacterial administration in terms of patient outcomes, overall costs and quality of care provided. Design: Prospective, nonblind, randomized, clinical study. Setting: Tertiary care hospital in Greece from November 1995 to June 1996. Patients and...

Objective: To support policy-making for patients with diabetes mellitus we compared the costs and effectiveness of initiation of insulin therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in 2 settings in The Netherlands. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: A shared-care setting and an...

Objective: To describe the cost savings achieved in a health maintenance organization (HMO)-sponsored primary care-based case management and disease management programs. Methods: The HMO-sponsored programs recruited patients in the primary care setting and relied on clinical guidelines and...