An electronic prescription processing option for electronic medical records can assist medical practitioners in the rapid selection, decision-making, processing and recording of individual prescriptions during encounters with patients in the consultation room or for repeat prescriptions. The...

Objectives: To compare the experience of one managed care organization (MCO) [Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Midwest Region] to the experience of a reference group of 15 other MCOs participating in a study designed to test the usefulness of outcomes management information in developing and...

Over the past 50 years the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has relied primarily on an assessment of standards compliance to make judgments about the capability of a healthcare organization to provide good quality care. Over the last decade, the focus has...

Increased worldwide cost consciousness with regard to healthcare spending has resulted in a greater reliance of health systems on pharmacoeconomics as a tool for obtaining optimal value, attaining better outcomes, and controlling spending. In such capacities, pharmacoeconomics is often used as a...

Hypertension, an insidious condition affecting approximately 50 million US adults, remains a central factor contributing to cardiac and other target organ disease. Despite increased detection and numerous therapeutic advances, three out of four people with hypertension in the US have...

The addition of candesartan cilexetil (Atacand(R), Amias(R), Blopress(R), Kenzen(R), Ratacand(R)) to standard therapy for chronic heart failure (CHF) provided important clinical benefits at little or no additional cost in France, Germany, and the UK, according to a detailed economic analysis...

Patient adherence to self-management strategies is a major issue in asthma, as in other chronic diseases. Adherence should not be defined exclusively in terms of medication use, but the more behavioral aspects of self-management such as avoidance of aggravating factors and risk behaviors,...

A number of first-line chemotherapy options for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are advocated in treatment guidelines and/or by various clinical investigators. Platinum-based chemotherapy has clearly demonstrated efficacy in patients with advanced NSCLC and is generally...

Disease management is a new method of managing healthcare which has arisen in response to rising healthcare costs and the integration of healthcare providers. Disease management is defined as an integrated, systems approach to healthcare designed to influence the progression of disease within...

Although the advantages of disseminating health information on the world wide web are well recognized, there has been considerable concern about the quality of online information. There has also been some debate as to whether organizations with a vested interest in a product, such as...