Most physicians were eligible for federal incentives in 2011, but few had EHR systems that met meaningful-use criteria.

As more physicians adopt electronic health record systems in their practices, policy interest is focusing on whether physicians are ready to meet the federal "meaningful use" criteria--a vital threshold to qualify for financial incentives. In our analysis of a 2011 nationally representative survey of office-based physicians, we found that 91 percent of physicians were eligible for Medicare or Medicaid meaningful-use incentives. About half of all physicians intended to apply. However, only 11 percent both intended to apply for the incentives and had electronic health record systems with the capabilities to support even two-thirds of the stage 1 core objectives required for meaningful use. Although the federal Medicare incentives will be available through 2016, and Medicaid incentives through 2021, widespread gaps in readiness throughout the states illustrate the challenges physicians face in meeting the federal schedule for the incentive programs.

Physicians in nonprimary care and small practices and those age 55 and older lag in adopting electronic health record systems.

By 2011 more than half of all office-based physicians were using electronic health record systems, but only about one-third of those physicians had systems with basic features such as the abilities to record information on patient demographics, view laboratory and imaging results, maintain problem lists, compile clinical notes, or manage computerized prescription ordering. Basic features are considered important to realize the potential of these systems to improve health care. We found that although trends in adoption of electronic health record systems across geographic regions converged from 2002 through 2011, adoption continued to lag for non-primary care specialists, physicians age fifty-five and older, and physicians in small (1-2 providers) and physician-owned practices. Federal policies are specifically aimed at encouraging primary care providers and small practices to achieve widespread use of electronic health records. To achieve their nationwide adoption, federal policies may also have to focus on encouraging adoption among non-primary care specialists, as well as addressing persistent gaps in the use of electronic record systems by practice size, physician age, and ownership status.

Nurse-led disease management for hypertension control in a diverse urban community: a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: Treated but uncontrolled hypertension is highly prevalent in African American and Hispanic communities. OBJECTIVE: To test the effectiveness on blood pressure of home blood pressure monitors alone or in combination with follow-up by a nurse manager. DESIGN: Randomized controlled effectiveness trial. PATIENTS: Four hundred and sixteen African American or Hispanic patients with a history of uncontrolled hypertension. Patients with blood pressure ≥150/95, or ≥140/85 for patients with diabetes or renal disease, at enrollment were recruited from one community clinic and four hospital outpatient clinics in East and Central Harlem, New York City. INTERVENTION: Patients were randomized to receive usual care or a home blood pressure monitor plus one in-person counseling session and 9 months of telephone follow-up with a registered nurse. During the trial, the home monitor alone arm was added. MAIN MEASURES: Change in systolic and diastolic blood pressure at 9 and 18 months. KEY RESULTS: Changes from baseline to 9 months in systolic blood pressure relative to usual care was -7.0 mm Hg (Confidence Interval [CI], -13.4 to -0.6) in the nurse management plus home blood pressure monitor arm, and +1.1 mm Hg (95% CI, -5.5 to 7.8) in the home blood pressure monitor only arm. No statistically significant differences in systolic blood pressure were observed among treatment arms at 18 months. No statistically significant improvements in diastolic blood pressure were found across treatment arms at 9 or 18 months. Changes in prescribing practices did not explain the decrease in blood pressure in the nurse management arm. CONCLUSIONS: A nurse management intervention combining an in-person visit, periodic phone calls, and home blood pressure monitoring over 9 months was associated with a statistically significant reduction in systolic, but not diastolic, blood pressure compared to usual care in a high risk population. Home blood pressure monitoring alone was no more effective than usual care.

Trends in diabetes treatment patterns among primary care providers.

Using data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, logit models tested for trends in the probability that visits by adult diabetes patients to their primary care providers included recommended treatment measures, such as a prescription for an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or an angiotensin-II receptor blocker (ARB), blood pressure measurement, and diet/nutrition or exercise counseling. Results indicated that the probability that visits included prescription of an ACE or ARB and blood pressure measurement increased significantly over the 1997-2005 period, while the probability that visits documented provision of exercise counseling rose since 2001.

Use of medical care for chronic conditions.

We used nationally representative data from the National Center for Health Statistics to compare 1995-96 and 2005-06 ambulatory care visit and 1996 and 2006 hospital discharge rates for adults for eight major chronic conditions. For the eight conditions combined, ambulatory care visit rates rose 21 percent, while hospital discharge rates fell 9 percent. Discharge rates fell for heart disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular disease. Ambulatory care visit rates rose at least 30 percent for arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, and depression. Medicaid recipients and black adults obtain more of their ambulatory care in hospital emergency and outpatient departments and less in physician offices than others do.

Cost-effectiveness of nurse-led disease management for heart failure in an ethnically diverse urban community.

BACKGROUND: Randomized, controlled trials have shown that nurse-led disease management for patients with heart failure can reduce hospitalizations. Less is known about the cost-effectiveness of these interventions. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of a nurse-led disease management intervention over 12 months, implemented in a randomized, controlled effectiveness trial. DESIGN: Cost-effectiveness analysis conducted alongside a randomized trial. DATA SOURCES: Medical costs from administrative records, and self-reported quality of life and nonmedical costs from patient surveys. PARTICIPANTS: Patients with systolic dysfunction recruited from ambulatory clinics in Harlem, New York. TIME HORIZON: 12 months. PERSPECTIVE: Societal and payer. INTERVENTION: 12-month program that involved 1 face-to-face encounter with a nurse and regular telephone follow-up. OUTCOME MEASURES: Quality of life as measured by the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 and EuroQol-5D and cost-effectiveness as measured by the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). RESULTS OF BASE-CASE ANALYSIS: Costs and quality of life were higher in the nurse-managed group than the usual care group. The ICERs over 12 months were $17,543 per EuroQol-5D-based quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and $15,169 per Health Utilities Index Mark 3-based QALY (in 2001 U.S. dollars). RESULTS OF SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS: From a payer perspective, the ICER ranged from $3673 to $4495 per QALY. Applying national prices in place of New York City prices yielded a societal ICER of $13,460 to $15,556 per QALY. Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves suggest that the intervention was most likely cost-effective for patients with less severe (New York Heart Association classes I to II) heart failure. LIMITATION: The trial was conducted in an ethnically diverse, inner-city neighborhood; thus, results may not be generalizable to other communities. CONCLUSION: Over 12 months, the nurse-led disease management program was a reasonably cost-effective way to reduce the burden of heart failure in this community.

When does a difference become a disparity? Conceptualizing racial and ethnic disparities in health.

Definitions of racial and ethnic disparities fall along a continuum from differences with little connotation of being unjust to those that result from overt discrimination. Where along this continuum one decides that a racial difference becomes a disparity is subjective, but the magnitude of the injustice is generally proportional to how much control a person is perceived to have over the cause of the difference in health. The degree to which one sees environmental factors and social context as shaping choices has important implications for the measurement of disparities and ultimately for directing efforts to eliminate them.

Collecting adequate data on racial and ethnic disparities in health: the challenges continue.

Data limitations continue to pose challenges for efforts to identify racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care and analyze the underlying causes. Given budget constraints, the most feasible federal strategies to improve national data are those requiring only modest expenditures. Collaborations among private and public stakeholders hold promise for improving estimation methods and assessing disparities among small populations.

The success of recruiting minorities, women, and elderly into a randomized controlled effectiveness trial.

BACKGROUND: Heart failure, a leading cause of hospitalization among elderly people, disproportionately afflicts African-American and other non-White populations. Studies of health care interventions often do not include these groups in proportion to numbers in the patient population. Our objective was to assess whether a randomized controlled effectiveness trial enrolled patients by ethnicity/race, gender, and age in proportion to those eligible. METHODS: We conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing nurse management and usual care among ambulatory heart failure patients at the four hospitals in East and Central Harlem, New York. We incorporated culturally sensitive and age-appropriate strategies to enroll a demographically representative group into the trial. Recruitment proceeded in several steps: identifying patients with billing code and visit criteria, documenting systolic dysfunction, obtaining clinician permission and correct addresses, contacting patients, and enrolling eligible patients. We assessed differences by ethnicity/race and gender at successive steps in the recruitment process, and differences between enrollees and refusals regarding overall health, evaluation of medical care, and difficulty receiving care. RESULTS: We enrolled 406 ambulatory patients by ethnicity/race and gender in proportion to the numbers eligible to be contacted (46% African-American/Black, 33% Hispanic, and 47% female). Among patients contacted, however, those 18 through 74 years were 2.0 to 3.3 times more likely than those > or = 75 years to enroll (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The recruitment strategy successfully enrolled patients by ethnicity/race, gender, and age through 74 years, but not those > or = 75 years. Registries of patients who refuse to enroll in trials could provide guidance for clinical and public policy.

Hypertension management in minority communities: a clinician survey.

BACKGROUND: Rates of blood pressure (BP) control are lower in minority populations compared to whites. OBJECTIVE: As part of a project to decrease health-related disparities among ethnic groups, we sought to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, and management practices of clinicians caring for hypertensive patients in a predominantly minority community. DESIGN/PARTICIPANTS: We developed clinical vignettes of hypertensive patients that varied by comorbidity (type II diabetes mellitus, chronic renal insufficiency, coronary artery disease, or isolated systolic hypertension alone). We randomly assigned patient characteristics, e.g., gender, age, race/ethnicity, to each vignette. We surveyed clinicians in ambulatory clinics of the 4 hospitals in East/Central Harlem, NY. MEASUREMENTS: The analysis used national guidelines to assess the appropriateness of clinicians' stated target BP levels. We also assessed clinicians' attitudes about the likelihood of each patient to achieve adequate BP control, adhere to medications, and return for follow-up. RESULTS: Clinicians' target BPs were within 2 mm Hg of the recommendations 9% of the time for renal disease patients, 86% for diabetes, 94% for isolated systolic hypertension, and 99% for coronary disease. BP targets did not vary by patient or clinician characteristics. Clinicians rated African-American patients 8.4% (p = .004) less likely and non-English speaking Hispanic patients 8.1% (p = .051) less likely than white patients to achieve/maintain BP control. CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians demonstrated adequate knowledge of recommended BP targets, except for patients with renal disease. Clinicians did not vary management by patients' sociodemographics but thought African-American, non-English-speaking Hispanic and unemployed patients were less likely to achieve BP control than their white counterparts.

Effects of nurse management on the quality of heart failure care in minority communities: a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: Despite therapies proven effective for heart failure with systolic dysfunction, the condition continues to cause substantial hospitalization, disability, and death, especially among African- American and other nonwhite populations. OBJECTIVE: To compare the effects of a nurse-led intervention focused on specific management problems versus usual care among ethnically diverse patients with systolic dysfunction in ambulatory care practices. DESIGN: Randomized effectiveness trial conducted from September 2000 to September 2002. SETTING: The 4 hospitals in Harlem, New York. PATIENTS: 406 adults (45.8% were non-Hispanic black adults, 32.5% were Hispanic adults, 46.3% were women, and 36.7% were > or =65 years of age) who met eligibility criteria: systolic dysfunction, English- or Spanish-language speakers, community-dwelling patients, and ambulatory care practice patients. INTERVENTION: During a 12-month intervention, bilingual nurses counseled patients on diet, medication adherence, and self-management of symptoms through an initial visit and regularly scheduled follow-up telephone calls and facilitated evidence-based changes to medications in discussions with patients' clinicians. MEASUREMENTS: Hospitalizations (in 406 of 406 patients during follow-up) and self-reported functioning (in 286 of 406 patients during follow-up) at 12 months. RESULTS: At 12 months, nurse management patients had had fewer hospitalizations (143 hospitalizations vs. 180 hospitalizations; adjusted difference, -0.13 hospitalization/person-year [95% CI, -0.25 to -0.001 hospitalization/person-year]) than usual care patients. They also had better functioning: The Short Form-12 physical component score was 39.9 versus 36.3, respectively (difference, 3.6 [CI, 1.2 to 6.1]), and the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire score was 38.6 versus 47.3, respectively (difference, -8.8 [CI, -15.3 to -2.2]). Through 12 months, 22 deaths occurred in each group and percentages of patients who were hospitalized at least once were similar in each group (30.5% of nurse management patients vs. 36.5% of control patients; adjusted difference, -7.1 percentage points [CI, -16.9 to 2.6 percentage points]). LIMITATIONS: Three nurses at 4 hospitals delivered interventions in this modest-sized trial, and 75% of the participants were from 1 site. It is not clear which aspects of the complex intervention accounted for the results. CONCLUSIONS: Nurse management can improve functioning and modestly lower hospitalizations in ethnically diverse ambulatory care patients who have heart failure with systolic dysfunction. Sustaining improved functioning may require continuing nurse contact.

Which physicians and practices are using electronic medical records?

Greater use of electronic medical records (EMRs) has the potential to improve the quality of medical care and has become a goal of the U.S. administration. According to the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, only an average of 17.6 percent of physicians reported use of EMRs in their office-based practices. The adoption rate did not increase from 2001 through 2003. Practices with more physicians and those owned by health maintenance organizations (HMOs) were significantly more likely to use this technology, but use varied little by the characteristics of individual physicians, the practice's scope of services, or the practice's sources of revenue.

How do urban African Americans and Latinos view the influence of diet on hypertension?

Uncontrolled hypertension and its complications continue to be major health problems that disproportionately affect poor minority communities. Although dietary modification is an effective treatment for hypertension, it is not clear how hypertensive minority patients view diet as part of their treatment, and what barriers affect their abilities to eat healthy diets. We conducted nine focus groups with 88 African American and Latino patients treated for hypertension to assess their knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs concerning hypertension. Participants generally agreed that certain foods and food additives play an important role in the cause and treatment of hypertension. However, they found clinician-recommended diets difficult to follow in the context of their family lives, social situations, and cultures. These diets were often considered expensive, an unwelcome departure from traditional and preferred diets, socially isolating, and not effective enough to obviate the need for medications. These findings suggest the importance of culturally sensitive approaches to dietary improvements.

Implementing evidence-based practice: evaluation of an opinion leader strategy to improve breast-feeding rates.

OBJECTIVE: The objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of opinion leaders in raising breast-feeding rates. STUDY DESIGN: A randomized controlled trial of an opinion leader strategy in 18 hospitals in Central New York State compared mothers' intention to breast-feed during baseline and study years. Multivariate logistic regression with a mixed model analyzed the effects on breast-feeding exclusively and on breast- and formula-feeding combined. RESULTS: Obstetric clinicians had a high degree of knowledge about breast-feeding benefits and of perceived responsibility to recommend breast-feeding. Obstetricians, family practitioners, and midwives agreed on the person identified as the opinion leader, in each case an obstetrician who was chief of obstetrics or obstetrics-gynecology. Breast-feeding rates in hospitals with the opinion leader intervention did not differ significantly from those in control-group hospitals during the study year. CONCLUSION: The opinion leader strategy in this case did not improve breast-feeding rates during the study year. Opinion leader strategies may make assumptions about clinician control that are not justified in situations such as breast-feeding.

Cost-effectiveness of vaccination against invasive pneumococcal disease among people 50 through 64 years of age: role of comorbid conditions and race.

BACKGROUND: Guidelines are increasingly recommending preventive services starting at 50 years of age, and policymakers are considering such a recommendation for pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccination. The finding that pneumococcal vaccination is cost-saving for people 65 years of age or older raises the question of the vaccination's implications for other older adults, especially black people, whose disease incidence exceeds that of nonblack people, and those with high-risk conditions. OBJECTIVE: To assess the implications of vaccinating black and nonblack people 50 through 64 years of age against invasive pneumococcal disease. DESIGN: Cost-effectiveness analysis. DATA SOURCES: Published literature for vaccination effectiveness and cost estimates; data on disease incidence and case-fatality rates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. TARGET POPULATION: Hypothetical cohort 50 through 64 years of age with the 1995 U.S. age distribution. TIME HORIZON: Lifetime. PERSPECTIVE: Societal. INTERVENTION: Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccination compared with no vaccination. OUTCOME MEASURES: Incremental medical costs and health effects, in quality-adjusted life-years per vaccinee. RESULTS OF BASE-CASE ANALYSIS: Vaccination saved medical costs and improved health among high-risk black people (27.55 dollars savings per vaccinee) and nonblack people (5.92 dollars savings per vaccinee), excluding survivors' future costs. For low-risk black and nonblack people and the overall general population, vaccination cost 2477 dollars, 8195 dollars, and 3434 dollars, respectively, to gain 1 year of healthy life. RESULTS OF SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS: Excluding survivors' future costs, in the general immunocompetent population, cost per quality-adjusted life-year in global worst-case results ranged from 21 513 dollars for black people to 68 871 dollars for nonblack people; in the high-risk population, cost ranged from 11 548 dollars for black people to 39 000 dollars for nonblack people. In the global best case, vaccination was cost-saving for black and nonblack people in the general immunocompetent and high-risk populations, excluding survivors' future costs. The cost-effectiveness range was narrower in probabilistic sensitivity analyses, with 95% probabilistic intervals ranging from cost-saving to 1594 dollars for black people and from cost-saving to 12 273 dollars for nonblack people in the general immunocompetent population. Costs per quality-adjusted life-year for low-risk people with case-fatality rates from 1998 were 2477 dollars for black people and 8195 dollars for nonblack people, excluding survivors' medical costs. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the current recommendation to vaccinate high-risk people and provide useful information for considering extending the recommendation to the general population 50 through 64 years of age. Lack of evidence about the effectiveness of revaccination for people 65 years of age or older, when disease risks are higher, argues for further research to guide vaccination policy.