HEALTH SERVICES (also see Alcohol and Other Drugs, Cancer, Women’s Health)

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Joe V. Selby, MD, MPH
Primary Source of Funding: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Description: This award is for a Master Task Order agreement between AHRQ and the HMO Research Network coordinated by DOR.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: John Hsu, MD, MBA, MSCE
Primary Source of Funding: Kaiser Permanente Garfield Memorial Foundation
Description: This study investigates the behaviors and environmental factors associated with exemplary physician-patient communication in the outpatient setting.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Lisa Herrinton, MD
Primary Source of Funding: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Description: The purpose of these centers is to develop a collaborative research network among nine HMOs to study the prescribing patterns of therapeutic agents and the determinants of their use, their effectiveness and safety in usual clinical care, patient adherence to medications, and the relative costs and cost-effectiveness of these agents. This project relates to the use and dosing of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors for patients with heart failure and its impact on hospital readmissions within managed care.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Joe V. Selby, MD, MPH
Primary Source of Funding: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Description: This HMO Research Network CERTS collaboration lead by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, will work in partnership to improve the detection of medication prescribing errors in the ambulatory setting, and to develop new uses of this information to improve care.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: John Hsu, MD, MBA, MSCE
Primary Source of Funding: Agency for Healthcare and Quality
Description: The "Electronic Communication in Integrated Delivery Systems" study will investigate the history, types, use, effects, barriers and facilitators of electronic communication between patients and providers in Integrated Delivery Systems, and assess the patterns of electronic communication use over time with respect to individual patient characteristics and with respect to conventional visits.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Gabriel Escobar, MD
Primary Source of Funding: Garfield Memorial Fund
Description: This project aims to define discrete electronic data patterns in Kaiser Permanente databases that could be used to identify patients requiring specialized services and/or processes amenable to improvement.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Gabriel J. Escobar, MD
Primary Source of Funding: Garfield Memorial Foundation
Description: The major goals of this project are to: 1) conduct two "failure to rescue" (FTR) outcomes studies - one involving general medical surgical services and one involving labor and delivery (L&D) services - analyzing the relationship between NSL's APO's and AEHE's; 2) develop computer algorthms that will permit the use of nursing staffing, hospitalization, and laboratory databases for proactive monitoring of NSL's, APO's, and AEHE's; 3) establish a research consortium involving non-KPMCP hospitals that would permit creation of pooled, de-identified datasets which could be used for pursuing Federal funding and for publishing in the peer-reviewed literature without sacrificing patient, provider, or corporate confidentiality.

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Carol Somkin, PhD
Primary Funding Source: National Cancer Institute
Description: This goal of this study is to develop a coordinated clinical studies network in order to increase the involvement of integrated delivery system patients in clinical trials through a program of research and demonstration.