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Exposure of young children to group day-care settings increases the risk of illness and may result in higher use of medical care. These observations raise concerns that the use of such settings for early intervention programs for low-birth-weight infants may increase the already high burden of medical care costs incurred by these children and their families. To address the question of medical care use associated with center-based care, we examined the hospital-based and ambulatory care reported for participants of the Infant Health and Development Program. This project is a multisite randomized trial of an early intervention program for preterm low-birth-weight infants with an intervention including 2 years of center-based care. The Intervention group did not differ in hospital-based care and averaged only two more physicians' visits over the 3-year observation period than the comparison group. We conclude that early intervention programs involving high-quality group care are not accompanied by substantial increases in health care use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In claims-based pharmacoepidemiologic and health services research studies of chronic medications, days supply can be determined using either an observed measure or a measure calculated from quantity dispensed and dosing directions. The two measures should yield the same duration, but if not, the preferred method is unknown., Objectives: We aimed to determine whether the observed or calculated measure of days supply more closely approximated the actual refill interval., Methods: Using California Medicaid data from 1998 to 2001, we identified all prescriptions followed by > or = 1 refill for nevirapine and abacavir tablets. For each record, we calculated the difference between the days supply and the refill interval for each method. In a subgroup analysis, we compared the measures only in records where the methods were discordant., Results: Of 29 646 records, in 27 230 (92.5%) the measures were identical. The difference between the days supply and the refill interval was identical for each measure with a median difference of 4 days (range 0-1142 days), p = 0.5 for the difference between them. In the discordant subset, the median difference for the observed measure was 10 days (range 0-1053 days) and for the calculated measure it was 12 days (range 0-1023 days), p = 0.003 for the difference between them., Conclusions: In California Medicaid, observed and calculated measures of days supply generally provided identical data which closely approximated the refill interval. In the few discordant records, the observed measure was slightly more accurate. These findings suggest that both variables provide valid data for temporal relations between anti-retroviral prescriptions and events.