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Objective: To determine if race-ethnicity is correlated with case-fatality rates among low-income patients hospitalized for COVID-19.Research Design: Observational cohort study using electronic health record data.Patients: All patients assessed for COVID-19 from March 2020 to January 2021 at one safety net health system.Measures: Patient demographic and clinical characteristics, and hospital care processes and outcomes.Results: Among 25,253 patients as­sessed for COVID-19, 6,357 (25.2%) were COVID-19 positive: 1,480 (23.3%) hospitalized; 334 (22.6%) required intensive care; and 106 (7.3%) died. More His­panic patients tested positive (51.8%) than non-Hispanic Black (31.4%) and White patients (16.7%, P

In case conferences, health care providers work together to identify and address patients’ complex social and medical needs. Public health nurses from the local health department joined case conference teams at federally qualified health center primary care sites to foster cross-sector collaboration, integration, and mutual learning. Public health nurse participation resulted in frequent referrals to local health department services, greater awareness of public health capabilities, and potential policy interventions to address social determinants of health.

Recent changes to US reimbursement policies are increasingly holding providers financially accountable for patients' health. Providing nonmedical services in conjunction with primary care-known as wraparound services-is one strategy to improve patient outcomes and reduce overall health care spending. These services leverage additional providers to address patients' social determinants of health. Eskenazi Health-an Indianapolis, Indiana, safety-net provider-introduced wraparound services at its federally qualified health center sites. Behavioral health, social work, dietetics, patient navigation, and other services that address patients' social and behavioral needs are co-located with primary care services. In an eleven-year panel of primary care patients, receipt of any wraparound service was negatively associated with subsequent hospitalizations and emergency department visits. The estimated cost savings from potentially avoided hospitalizations alone was $1.4 million annually. Under value-based payment, wraparound services may be one part of a portfolio of strategies to address the social, behavioral, and environmental factors that drive poor patient health and increase costs.

Background: Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is an efficacious prevention practice. However, little research has assessed differences in prescreening outcomes between inpatient and outpatient primary care or among different prescreening administration methods. This study tested whether administration method (self-administered vs interview) and setting (inpatient versus outpatient) predicted prescreening outcomes in a large sample of primary care patients. Then, among patients who prescreened positive, it tested whether full screening scores differed by administration method and setting. Methods: Researchers used binomial logistic regression to assess predicted prescreening outcomes and analysis of variance to assess differences in SBIRT screening scores across a total of 14 447 unique patient visits in 10 outpatient sites and 1 centrally located hospital. Results: Controlling for gender, depression, and other substance use, both medical setting and method of prescreening, predicted prescreening results. Among patients who prescreened positive for alcohol, setting also was associated with mean screening scores. However, outcomes were not uniform by substance (eg, alcohol vs other drugs). Conclusion: The results support previous studies on this topic that had utilized cross-study comparison or that were not specific to SBIRT prescreening/screening mechanisms. At the same time, nuanced findings were observed that had not previously been reported and suggest the need for further research in this area.

Our study aimed to identify which attributes of a primary healthcare experience have the most impact on patient satisfaction as well as which aspects of each attribute are most significant in patients' response to the services they receive. The three attributes examined in this study were access, staff care, and physician care. Analyses of the aspects of each attribute controlled for age, gender, and race. Data used in this study were obtained through a survey questionnaire with random sampling, resulting in the sample size of 8,465. The psychometric properties of the questionnaire were also examined and showed appropriate reliability and validity. The multiple regression analysis showed that among the three attributes, physician care was most influential, closely followed by staff care, with access having much less influence. Further analyses revealed that specific aspects of each attribute were more influential on patient satisfaction. Within the physician care attribute, patients were found to be rational consumers who were looking for surrogate indicators of correct diagnosis and treatment options among the measures available to them. They were much less likely to be influenced by so-called bedside manner. Within the staff care attribute, willingness and compassionate behaviors of staff and prompt service were most important. Within the access attribute, patients sought caring interaction with appointment personnel. After considering the findings, we discuss possible actions for healthcare managers.

In 2001, the Institute of Medicine documented the gap between recommended and actual practice of medicine in the United States (Institute of Medicine 2001). Many proven interventions were not routinely being used. Reactive airways diseases, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), are an example. They are common, morbid, and costly conditions (McFadden and Gilbert 1992). Despite widely accepted evidence-based treatment guidelines (Canadian Thoracic Society Workshop Group 1992; National Asthma Education Program Expert Panel Report. Executive Summary: Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma 1994), many physicians do not prescribe such treatments to patients who might benefit from them (Cabana et al. 2001). The Institute of Medicine has also stated that electronic medical record systems are “an essential technology for health care” (Institute of Medicine, Committee on Improving the Medical Record 1991) that could improve medical practice (Johnston et al. 1994; Tierney 2001). However, clinical information systems are expensive (Dambro, Weiss, and McClure 1988), potentially intrusive (Krall and Sittig 2001), and have not always improved care (Johnston et al. 1994). We have previously shown that computer-based interventions can increase preventive care (McDonald et al. 1984; Tierney, Hui, and McDonald 1986; McDonald et al. 1999; Tierney 2001) and reduce costs (Tierney, Miller, and McDonald 1990; Tierney et al. 1993). We have had less success affecting chronic management of renal disease (Harris et al. 1998) or heart disease (Tierney et al. 2003; Subramanian et al. 2004). We assessed whether guideline-based care suggestions delivered via physicians' and pharmacists' computer workstations could improve the outpatient management and outcomes among patients with asthma or COPD.

To describe unexpected challenges and strategies to overcome them when conducting randomized controlled trials (RCT) of health services research interventions in retail pharmacies.Thirty-six retail drug stores in Indianapolis.We conducted an RCT to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention to increase pharmacists' involvement in caring for customers. We describe: (1) our RCT as originally designed, (2) unexpected challenges we faced; and (3) how we resolved those challenges.Randomized controlled trial.Major modifications in research design were necessitated by factors such as corporate restructuring, heightened sensitivity to patient confidentiality, and difficulties altering employees' behavior. We overcame these barriers by conducting research that is consistent with corporate goals, involving appropriate corporate administrators and technical personnel early in the process, and being flexible.Health services researchers should conduct RCTs in a variety of non-academic practice settings to increase generalizability and better reflect the true impact of interventions. Pragmatic problems, although significant, can be successfully overcome.

A pharmaceutical care program for patients with reactive airways disease (RAD) is described. A pharmaceutical care program for patients with RAD was developed and implemented at 36 CVS pharmacies. The impact on patient outcomes, pharmacist job satisfaction, and other variables is currently being evaluated in a controlled trial with more than 1100 patient enrollees. Guiding the program are the beliefs that pharmacists must have clinically relevant, patient-specific data to provide appropriate care; that pharmacists must have adequate training to provide pharmaceutical care; that the program must be sensitive to organizational barriers, particularly time demands; and that there must be ongoing support for the program. The program has five components: (1) computer display of patient-specific data for patients enrolled in the study, (2) distribution of tailored patient education materials, (3) use of a resource guide to facilitate the implementation of pharmaceutical care, (4) strategies to reinforce and facilitate the program, and (5) pharmacist training. While developed for community pharmacies, the program is applicable to most ambulatory care pharmacy practices. A pharmaceutical care program for patients with RAD was developed for use in community pharmacies.

Surveys used for health plan quality reporting are generally administered annually to health plan enrollees to assess satisfaction with both the health plan and health care services. Therefore, surveys may lack sensitivity to measure the effects of patient-focused, quality improvement initiatives that could demonstrate results in a shorter time period.We describe the development and testing of a multidimensional, visit-specific measure of satisfaction with primary care that may be used in quality improvement.Conducted in five adult and pediatric primary care sites serving a commercial, largely managed-care population, the survey includes the Medical Outcomes Study Visit-Specific Questionnaire, the American Board of Internal Medicine Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire, and locally developed items. We assessed the instrument's reliability, validity, and utility for quality improvement.For both adult and pediatric samples, three factors emerged: satisfaction with the provider, satisfaction with access, and satisfaction with the office. Satisfaction with the provider and with the office were independently correlated with overall satisfaction in both samples; satisfaction with access was significantly correlated with overall satisfaction only for adults. For adults, patients who disenrolled from the health plan were less satisfied with the office compared with patients who remained with the health plan. Finally, for adults, we detected significant differences across practice sites in terms of satisfaction with office and access; for children, there were intersite differences in terms of satisfaction with provider, office, and access.We have support for the reliability and validity of this instrument that has identified differences in satisfaction between practice sites that may be used for quality improvement.

PURPOSE: Though case management has been recommended to improve the outcomes of patients with costly or morbid conditions, it has seldom been studied in controlled trials. We performed a randomized, controlled clinical trial of an intensive, multidisciplinary case management program for patients with chronic renal insufficiency and followed patients for 5 years. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We enrolled 437 primary-care patients (73% of those eligible) with chronic renal insufficiency (estimated creatinine clearance consistently 1.4 mg/dL) who were attending an urban academic general internal medicine practice. The intensive case management, administered during the first 2 years after enrollment, consisted of mandatory repeated consultations in a nephrology case management clinic staffed by two nephrologists, a renal nurse, a renal dietitian, and a social worker. Control patients received usual care. Primary outcome measurements included serum creatinine level, estimated creatinine clearance, health services use, and mortality in the 5 years after enrollment. Secondary measures included use of renal sparing and potentially nephrotoxic drugs. RESULTS: There were no differences in renal function, health services use, or mortality in the first, second, or third through fifth years after enrollment. There were significantly more outpatient visits among intervention patients, mainly because of the added visits to the nephrology case management clinic. There were also no significant differences in the use of renal sparing or selected potentially nephrotoxic drugs. The annual direct costs of the intervention were $89,355 ($484 per intervention patient). CONCLUSION: This intensive, multidisciplinary case-management intervention had no effect on the outcomes of care among primary-care patients with established chronic renal insufficiency. Such expensive and intrusive interventions, despite representing state-of-the-art care, should be tested prospectively before being widely introduced into practice.

Obtaining accurate and representative patient-centered data may be difficult among poor, inner-city patients because of changing addresses, variable access to telephones, and a higher prevalence of illiteracy than in the populations in which many survey instruments were developed and tested. Assumptions about the usefulness of mailed surveys versus telephone interviews may not hold for the urban poor. Therefore, identifying the most efficient mode of survey administration in this population becomes an important methodological question.We conducted a randomized trial of patients discharged from the inpatient medicine service of an urban teaching hospital to compare telephone interview with mailed self-administration of a detailed instrument for measuring patients' experiences with hospital care. Our primary outcomes were response rate, missing data, and data collection costs. Patients were excluded if they were not discharged to home or were mentally or physically unable to complete mailed or telephone interviews. The research assistant contacted eligible patients while hospitalized, informed them of the postdischarge survey, and obtained current phone numbers and addresses. Patients then were randomized to receive a 116-item satisfaction survey via one of two survey methods: mail-first (mailed surveys with follow-up on nonrespondents by telephone) or telephone-first (telephone interviews with follow-up of nonrespondents by mail).Of the 252 patients enrolled, 130 were randomized to the mail-first and 122 to the telephone-first method. Response rates were higher with the telephone-first (73%) compared with the mail-first method (50%; P0.0001). Surveys obtained by the telephone-first method had fewer missing data (0.7 +/- 2.39) for those items not involved in skip patterns compared with the mail-first method (7.1 +/- 12.3; P0.001) and were 42% less expensive per completed survey ($26.32 versus $37.35; P0.0001).In this survey of patients served by an urban teaching hospital, a strategy of telephone interviews with mail follow-up proved less expensive and yielded a higher response rate with more complete data than using a method where mailed surveys were followed by back-up telephone interviews. In addition, we believe that the improved response rate for telephone interviews compared with those reported in the literature for similar populations is the result of informing inpatients of the survey and obtaining telephone numbers and addresses in the hospital.

Barriers to effective health care are potential contributors to the increased prevalence of hypertension and hypertension-related renal disease observed in black patients. We have enrolled 333 primarily elderly (mean age 69 years) black (87%) patients with hypertension and chronic renal insufficiency into a prospective randomized trial testing the effect of intense multidisciplinary management on progression of chronic renal insufficiency. These patients have an average 6 years of education and $400-$800 monthly household income: 57% have diabetes. Our baseline data include the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire administered by home interviewers who also recorded sociodemographic data, medications and questionnaires regarding medication compliance and symptoms related to anti-hypertensive drugs. Inpatient and outpatient vital signs, test results and diagnoses came from patients' computerized medical records. We used multiple linear regression to identify correlates of overall satisfaction. We also analyzed three subscales: access to care, financial aspects and interpersonal manner of physicians. We included only variables with univariate correlations (P0.05) in the models. Decreased overall satisfaction correlated with more symptoms related to anti-hypertensive drugs (P0.001), lower medication compliance (P = 0.01), and higher diastolic blood pressure (P = 0.08). Decreased satisfaction with access to care correlated with more symptoms related to anti-hypertensive drugs (P0.001) and decreased medication compliance (P = 0.08). Decreased satisfaction with financial aspects of care correlated with more symptoms related to anti-hypertensive drugs (P0.001), lower medication compliance (P = 0.01) and more proteinuria (P = 0.02). Finally, decreased satisfaction with interpersonal manner of physicians correlated with lower medication compliance (P0.001), lower albumin (P = 0.01) and sodium (P = 0.04), and higher diastolic blood pressure (P = 0.04). These cross-sectional baseline data describe a group of mostly black inner-city patients with hypertension and chronic renal insufficiency in whom decreased satisfaction with care correlates with decreased medication compliance, increased symptoms related to anti-hypertensive drug therapy, higher diastolic blood pressure and more proteinuria. Our prospective study may help determine whether improving satisfaction improves compliance and blood pressure control, and forestalls complications in this high-risk population.

Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are known to have significantly reduced functional abilities, as measured by the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP). We investigated the clinical correlates with SIP scores in a cohort of patients with lesser degrees of renal dysfunction recruited from an academic general medicine practice (mean calculated creatinine clearance, 25 mL/min). Of 603 eligible patients with chronic renal insufficiency (CRI) defined as a serum creatinine greater than 1.5 mg/dL and a calculated creatinine clearance less than 50 mL/min on two occasions more than 6 months apart, 360 (60%) agreed to participate. These patients were primarily elderly (mean age, 69 years) black (83%), women (69.2%), with an average of 6 years of education and a household income of $400 to $800 per month; 92% had hypertension and 57% had diabetes. The SIP was administered in-home by trained interviewers. Independent variables included demographic data, education, income, and medications (via interviewers), vital signs taken by a renal nurse, and diagnostic test results and diagnoses from patient's computerized records. The total SIP score was the dependent variable, and its physical and psychosocial subscales were also investigated. Variables with univariate correlations with total SIP (P0.05) were included in a multiple regression analysis. All variables with a multivariable P value less than 0.10 were included in the final model. The mean SIP score was 24.5 +/- 15.6, higher than that found in patients on dialysis. Significant (P0.05) independent correlates with higher SIP scores (greater disability) were lower educational level and income, prior diagnoses of coronary artery disease and stroke, and lower serum albumin.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

We examined integration processes of patient satisfaction among four groups of patients and found that these groups of patients combined their health care attribute reactions differently to form their overall satisfaction. For the study, we used an emerging noncompensatory model in health care and considered an interaction effect in the analysis. We discuss the implication of the different integration processes of patient satisfaction for health care managers and make practical suggestions for more effective and efficient means of increasing patient satisfaction.

This paper examines the promises and pitfalls of integrated models of mental health care in primary care settings, and presents the findings of a successful pilot study of integrated care. There are a number of technological breakthroughs which could improve treatment outcomes. However, research indicates improved outcomes are likely only when changes include new practice patterns, patient education, and systematic monitoring of patient process and outcomes. A study in a health maintenance organization is presented based on a staged model of treatment and exemplifying these principles. We conclude that integrated models while technically feasible, are organizationally complex in actual practice.

Study Objective. To assess the effects of evidence-based treatment suggestions for hypertension made to physicians and pharmacists using a comprehensive electronic medical record system. Design. Randomized controlled trial with a 2 times 2 factorial design of physician and pharmacist interventions, which resulted in four groups of patients: physician intervention only, pharmacist intervention only, intervention by physician and pharmacist, and intervention by neither physician nor pharmacist (control). Setting. Academic primary care internal medicine practice. Subjects. Seven hundred twelve patients with uncomplicated hypertension. Measurements and Main Results. Suggestions were displayed to physicians on computer workstations used to write outpatient orders and to pharmacists when filling prescriptions. The primary end point was generic health-related quality of life. Secondary end points were symptom profile and side effects from antihypertensive drugs, number of emergency department visits and hospitalizations, blood pressure measurements, patient satisfaction with physicians and pharmacists, drug therapy compliance, and health care charges. In the control group, implementation of care changes in accordance with treatment suggestions was observed in 26% of patients. In the intervention groups, compliance with suggestions was poor, with treatment suggestions implemented in 25% of patients for whom suggestions were displayed only to pharmacists, 29% of those for whom suggestions were displayed only to physicians, and 35% of the group for whom both physicians and pharmacists received suggestions (p=0.13). Intergroup differences were neither statistically significant nor clinically relevant for generic health-related quality of life, symptom and side-effect profiles, number of emergency department visits and hospitalizations, blood pressure measurements, charges, or drug therapy compliance. Conclusion. Computer-based intervention using a sophisticated electronic physician order-entry system failed to improve compliance with treatment suggestions or outcomes of patients with uncomplicated hypertension.

Electronic information systems have been proposed as one means to reduce medical errors of commission (doing the wrong thing) and omission (not providing indicated care).To assess the effects of computer-based cardiac care suggestions.A randomized, controlled trial targeting primary care physicians and pharmacists.A total of 706 outpatients with heart failure and/or ischemic heart disease.Evidence-based cardiac care suggestions, approved by a panel of local cardiologists and general internists, were displayed to physicians and pharmacists as they cared for enrolled patients.Adherence with the care suggestions, generic and condition-specific quality of life, acute exacerbations of their cardiac disease, medication compliance, health care costs, satisfaction with care, and physicians' attitudes toward guidelines.Subjects were followed for 1 year during which they made 3,419 primary care visits and were eligible for 2,609 separate cardiac care suggestions. The intervention had no effect on physicians' adherence to the care suggestions (23% for intervention patients vs 22% for controls). There were no intervention-control differences in quality of life, medication compliance, health care utilization, costs, or satisfaction with care. Physicians viewed guidelines as providing helpful information but constraining their practice and not helpful in making decisions for individual patients.Care suggestions generated by a sophisticated electronic medical record system failed to improve adherence to accepted practice guidelines or outcomes for patients with heart disease. Future studies must weigh the benefits and costs of different (and perhaps more Draconian) methods of affecting clinician behavior.

The authors investigated the relationships between patients' reactions to health care attributes and their overall satisfaction with primary care. The study found the following: (1) patients' overall satisfaction levels are disproportionately influenced by low levels of their reactions (less satisfied) to the primary care attribute, rather than simply aver-aged out among attribute reactions. This is a noncompensatory relationship. (2) The marginal impact of primary care attributes on overall satisfaction decreases at higher levels of patients' reactions (more satisfied) to primary care attributes, indicating a nonlinear relationship. Patients combine their reactions to the health care attributes by means of noncompensatory and nonlinear models to form their overall satisfaction. Decision makers should selectively concentrate training resources on those areas of attributes showing high dissatisfaction rather than attempt to improve an attribute that showed the largest parameter estimate. This approach would not only save resources but result in better out-comes of patient satisfaction.

ContextIt is not known whether patient outcomes are enhanced by effective pharmacist-patient interactions.ObjectiveTo assess the effectiveness of a pharmaceutical care program for patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).Design, Setting, and ParticipantsRandomized controlled trial conducted at 36 community drugstores in Indianapolis, Ind. We enrolled 1113 participants with active COPD or asthma from July 1998 to December 1999. Outcomes were assessed in 947 (85.1%) participants at 6 months and 898 (80.7%) at 12 months.InterventionsThe pharmaceutical care program (n = 447) provided pharmacists with recent patient-specific clinical data (peak expiratory flow rates [PEFRs], emergency department [ED] visits, hospitalizations, and medication compliance), training, customized patient educational materials, and resources to facilitate program implementation. The PEFR monitoring control group (n = 363) received a peak flow meter, instructions about its use, and monthly calls to elicit PEFRs. However, PEFR data were not provided to the pharmacist. Patients in the usual care group (n = 303) received neither peak flow meters nor instructions in their use; during monthly telephone interviews, PEFR rates were not elicited. Pharmacists in both control groups had a training session but received no components of the pharmaceutical care intervention.Main Outcome MeasuresPeak expiratory flow rates, breathing-related ED or hospital visits, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), medication compliance, and patient satisfaction.ResultsAt 12 months, patients receiving pharmaceutical care had significantly higher peak flow rates than the usual care group (P = .02) but not than PEFR monitoring controls (P = .28). There were no significant between-group differences in medication compliance or HRQOL. Asthma patients receiving pharmaceutical care had significantly more breathing-related ED or hospital visits than the usual care group (odds ratio, 2.16; 95% confidence interval, 1.76-2.63; P

Objective To discuss with pharmacists and patients with reactive airways disease their beliefs about pharmaceutical care and the pharmacist's role in health care, obstacles to providing pharmaceutical care in community pharmacies, and strategies to overcome these obstacles Design Two focus groups of patients, two focus groups of pharmacists Participants Thirteen patients with reactive airways disease and 11 chain pharmacists Main Outcome Measures Qualitative reports on the pharmacist's role in health care delivery and obstacles to implementing pharmaceutical care programs. Results Pharmacists wished to provide pharmaceutical care, and patients were supportive of pharmacists' involvement in their health care. Both viewed counseling as an important role for pharmacists and believed that pharmacists should work with patients' physicians. Reported obstacles included lack of time, inadequate privacy, and pharmacists' lack of direct access to patients' physicians. Pharmacists and patients believed pharmacists should have access to patient-specific clinical data Conclusion Focus groups provided valuable information for designing pragmatic pharmaceutical care. The obstacles and possible solutions identified through the discussions represent fertile ground for designing innovative pharmaceutical care programs.

Symptoms are the principal reason for clinic visits in about half of all outpatient encounters, yet biomedical research has typically focused on specific diseases rather than generic symptoms. The ...

The purpose of this study was to examine the dimensions of physician work satisfaction across a variety of medical specialties and practice settings.A modified version of the Scheckler et al survey instrument was mailed to all physicians in Marion County, Indiana. Forty-two percent (777) of the eligible physicians responded. Exploratory factor analysis and internal consistency measures were used to assess the instrument's validity and reliability. Multivariable linear regression was used to predict global and summary scale scores.Four dimensions of physician work satisfaction were identified: relationships with patients (k = 6, alpha = 0.81), autonomy in clinical decision-making (k = 8, alpha = 0.81), office resources (k = 7, alpha = 0.87), and professional relationships (k = 5, alpha = 0.82). Most (73%) of the physicians were satisfied with their overall practice, and the majority were also satisfied with their income. Significant differences were observed in the sources and magnitude of physician work satisfaction across medical specialty, practice setting, and financial arrangement. Physicians in private practice were most satisfied with their overall practice and office resources, whereas physicians in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) were most satisfied with their autonomy in clinical decision-making. Physicians not working in HMOs but having a large percentage of patients with capitated reimbursement were not enthusiastic about the effect of managed care on their medical practice. Among primary care physicians, family practitioners and general internists were generally less satisfied, and general pediatricians were generally more satisfied with most aspects of their medical practices.The modified version of the Scheckler et al instrument is a reliable and valid measure of physician work satisfaction. Increases in the market share of managed care have differentially affected the work satisfaction of physicians based on their medical specialty, practice setting, and financial arrangements.

Increasing amounts of medical knowledge, clinical data, and patient expectations have created a fertile environment for developing and using clinical practice guidelines. Electronic medical records have provided an opportunity to invoke guidelines during the everyday practice of clinical medicine to improve health care quality and control costs. In this paper, efforts to incorporate complex guidelines [those for heart failure from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR)] into a network of physicians' interactive microcomputer workstations are reported. The task proved difficult because the guidelines often lack explicit definitions (e.g., for symptom severity and adverse events) that are necessary to navigate the AHCPR algorithm. They also focus more on errors of omission (not doing the right thing) than on errors of commission (doing the wrong thing) and do not account for comorbid conditions, concurrent drug therapy, or the timing of most interventions and follow-up. As they stand, the heart failure guidelines give good general guidance to individual practitioners, but cannot be used to assess quality or care without extensive "translation" into the local environment. Specific recommendations are made so that future guidelines will prove useful to a wide range of prospective users.

End-stage renal disease is a devastating complication of essential hypertension and type II diabetes mellitus, conditions that commonly occur together. We and others have previously suggested that the outcome of both conditions may be influenced by more aggressive treatment. We examined a large general medicine outpatient population; 72% were black and 41% were diabetic (95% type II). Decreased renal function, defined as a serum creatinine greater than or equal to mg/dL, developed in 18.1%. A multivariable logistic regression analysis identified glucose control, systolic blood pressure level, and male gender as indicators of decreased renal function. These data suggested that both glucose and blood pressure control may decrease the frequency of impaired renal function. However, when these variables were controlled, blacks still had almost twice the risk for renal dysfunction of whites. The data draw attention to, and elucidate the exceptionally high incidence of renal dysfunction in hypertensive blacks with or without diabetes. Further, they may explain the inordinate numbers of blacks with hypertension requiring dialysis. Prospective trials to test the efficacy of blood pressure and glucose control on the course of renal disease in hypertensive and/or type II diabetic patients are warranted.

Objective: To identify predictors of poststroke quality of life. Background: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measures assess the impact of disease on the physical, emotional, and social aspects of patients’ lives. Although HRQOL measures are used increasingly, factors associated with HRQOL poststroke and the ability of stroke-specific versus generic HRQOL measures to predict patient-reported HRQOL are not well known. Methods: A total of 71 patients were evaluated 1 month postischemic stroke with a new stroke-specific HRQOL measure—the SS-QOL—and the SF-36, a generic HRQOL measure. Stroke severity, impairments, and functional limitations were also measured. Demographic variables and outcome measure scores were compared between patients rating their overall HRQOL the same as prestroke versus those with overall HRQOL worse than prestroke. Independent predictors of overall HRQOL were identified using multivariable modeling. Results: Variables associated with better overall HRQOL were higher (better) SS-QOL and Barthel Index scores, and lower (better) NIH Stroke Scale and Beck Depression Inventory scores. Independent predictors of good overall HRQOL were the SS-QOL score (odds ratio [OR], 2.97; 95% CI, 1.3, 7.1; p = 0.01) and NIH Stroke Scale score (OR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.47, 0.99; p = 0.05). Demographic factors and SF-36 scores were not associated with overall HRQOL ratings. Conclusions: Stroke-specific quality of life score and patient impairments predict patient-reported overall health-related quality of life (HRQOL) poststroke. SF-36 scores were not associated with overall HRQOL ratings. Disease-specific HRQOL measures are more sensitive to meaningful changes in poststroke HRQOL and may thus aid in identifying specific aspects of poststroke function that clinicians and “trialists” can target to improve patients’ HRQOL after stroke.

In Reply. — We welcome Bleyer's letter as it gives us the opportunity to correct the error in our original editorial.1Black Americans undergoing dialysis do have a better survival rate than white patients. The error was due to misinterpretation of the text and tables in reference 23 in our editorial.2We do not believe that the error in any way detracts from the message that we wished to convey in the editorial, ie, that black patients suffer more from end-stage renal disease even after correcting for clinical, demographic, and socioeconomic variables. Like Bleyer, we have also speculated on why black patients undergoing dialysis would have better survival rates. Bleyer argues that it is unlikely that this better outcome is due to better care for black patients than for white patients and he offers clinical reasons why blacks survive longer. He postulates that blacks undergoing dialysis are less

As early as 1977, studies of patients undergoing dialysis in the United States showed that blacks were overrepresented relative to their proportion of the national population. 1 However, it was unclear whether this disparity indicated some particular vulnerability of the kidneys of black Americans or was due instead to the well-recognized increased prevalence in blacks of diseases that cause renal insufficiency, such as hypertension 2 and type II diabetes mellitus. 3 Subsequent epidemiologic investigations that controlled for hypertension, diabetes, their degree of control, and other clinical factors demonstrated that black patients still had two to four times the risk of developing renal insufficiency compared with white patients. 4,5 However, each of these studies, including our own, 5 was incomplete because (1) they involved patients receiving care in particular settings rather than investigating the population at large and (2) they did not control for socioeconomic status. In this issue of the