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Abstract Background Patients often express strong preferences for the forms of treatment available for their disease. Incorporating these preferences into the process of treatment decision-making might improve patients' adherence to treatment, contributing to better outcomes. We describe the methodology used in a study aiming to assess treatment outcomes when patients' preferences for treatment are closely matched to recommended treatments. Method Participants included patients with moderate and severe psoriasis attending outpatient dermatology clinics at the University Medical Centre Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Germany. A self-administered online survey used conjoint analysis to measure participants' preferences for psoriasis treatment options at the initial study visit. Physicians' treatment recommendations were abstracted from each participant's medical records. The Preference Matching Index (PMI), a measure of concordance between the participant's preferences for treatment and the physician's recommended treatment, was determined for each participant at t1 (initial study visit). A clinical outcome measure, the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index, and two participant-derived outcomes assessing treatment satisfaction and health related quality of life were employed at t1, t2 (twelve weeks post-t1) and t3 (twelve weeks post-t2). Change in outcomes was assessed using repeated measures analysis of variance. The association between participants' PMI scores at t1 and outcomes at t2 and t3 was evaluated using multivariate regressions analysis. Discussion We describe methods for capturing concordance between patients' treatment preferences and recommended treatment and for assessing its association with specific treatment outcomes. The methods are intended to promote the incorporation of patients' preferences in treatment decision-making, enhance treatment satisfaction, and improve treatment effectiveness through greater adherence.

Sendi et al. (Soc. Sci. Med. 57 (2003) 2207) extend previous research on cost-effectiveness analysis to the evaluation of a portfolio of interventions with risky outcomes using a 'second best' approach that can identify improvements in efficiency in the allocation of resources. This method, however, cannot be used to directly identify the optimal solution to the resource allocation problem. Theoretically, a stricter adherence to the foundations of portfolio theory would permit direct optimization in portfolio selection, however, when we include uncertainty in our analysis in addition to the traditional concept of risk (which is often mislabelled uncertainty) complexities are introduced that create significant hurdles in the development of practical applications of portfolio theory for health care policy decision making. Keywords: Portfolio; Uncertainty; Cost-effectiveness analysis

Informed by ecological and family system frameworks, our study investigated the relationship between family- and community-level factors, and their cross-level interactions, with evidence-based home visiting program participation in a sample of 2409 mothers (mean age: 24.15 years). Using 2-level hierarchical linear modeling, we observed that mothers living in disadvantaged communities demonstrated less active engagement in evidence-based home visiting. Cross-level interaction effects revealed that mothers' unstable living conditions and psychiatric problems amplified the negative influence of disadvantaged communities on program engagement. Conversely, mothers who were first-time parents showed higher levels of participation in family support programs when they resided in disadvantaged communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing advocacy to incorporate patients' preferences in psoriasis treatment. The aim of this study was to critically review the scientific evidence regarding the elicitation and use of patients' preferences in pso-riasis treatment. Published studies were systematically identified through PubMed, the Cochrane Library, the Web of Knowledge, and PsychlNFO. Additional studies were identified by reviewing the reference lists of retrie-ved articles and through contact with experts in the field. Included studies involved the elicitation or use of patient preferences related to the treatment of psoriasis or pso-riatic arthritis. Twenty-three studies were included in the review. The earliest articles were published in the 1980s. Patients' preferences were elicited for psoriasis treatment options, treatment attributes and for health state charac-teristics. Preferences were elicited from both patients and physicians. No study examined the use of patients' preferences in psoriasis treatment decision-making. The evidence demonstrates that patients' preferences relevant to psoriasis treatment are present and measurable. How-ever, the potential use of those preferences has largely been ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patient-centered care has been proposed as a strategy for improving treatment outcomes in the management of psoriasis and other chronic diseases. A more detailed understanding of patients' utilities and disutilities associated with treatment features may facilitate shared decision-making in the clinical encounter. The purpose of this study was to examine the features of psoriasis treatment that are most and least preferred by patients and to identify correlates of these preferences. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 163 patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis was conducted in a German academic medical center. We assessed patients' characteristics, elicited their preferences for a range of potential treatment features, and quantified preference scores (utilities) associated with each treatment feature using hierarchical Bayes estimation. After identifying the most and least preferred treatment features, we explored correlates of these preferences using multivariate regression models. Results: Mean preference scores (MPS) for the least preferred treatment features were consistently greater than those for the most preferred treatment features. Patients generally expressed strong preferences against prolonged treatments in the inpatient setting (MPS = -13.48) and those with a lower probability of benefit (MPS = -12.28), while treatments with a high probability of benefit (MPS = 10.51) were generally preferred. Younger patients and women were more concerned with treatment benefit as compared with older patients and men. Conclusion: Both negative and positive preferences appear important for shared decision- making. Recognition of characteristics associated with strong negative preferences may be particularly useful in promoting patient-centered environments [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: A significant proportion of acute care neurosurgical patients present to hospital outside regular working hours. The objective of our study was to evaluate the structure of neurosurgical on-call services in Germany, the use of modern communication devices and teleradiology services, and the personal acceptance of modern technologies by neurosurgeons., Materials and Methods: A nationwide survey of all 141 neurosurgical departments in Germany was performed. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: one for neurosurgical departments and one for individual neurosurgeons. The questionnaire, available online and mailed in paper form, included 21 questions about on-call service structure; the availability and use of communication devices, teleradiology services, and other information services; and neurosurgeons' personal acceptance of modern technologies., Results: The questionnaire return rate from departments was 63.1% (89/141), whereas 187 individual neurosurgeons responded. For 57.3% of departments, teleradiology services were available and were frequently used by 62.2% of neurosurgeons. A further 23.6% of departments described using smartphone screenshots of computed tomography (CT) images transmitted by multimedia messaging service (MMS), and 8.6% of images were described as sent by unencrypted email. Although 47.0% of neurosurgeons reported owning a smartphone, only 1.1% used their phone for on-call image communication., Conclusion: Teleradiology services were observed to be widely used by on-call neurosurgeons in Germany. Nevertheless, a significant number of departments appear to use outdated techniques or techniques that leave patient data unprotected. On-call neurosurgeons in Germany report a willingness to adopt more modern approaches, utilizing readily available smartphones or tablet technology., (Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Objective: We sought to improve our understanding of how health care quality improvement (QI) methods and innovations could be efficiently and effectively translated between settings to reduce persistent gaps in health care quality both within and across countries. We aimed to examine whether we could identify a core set of organizational cultural attributes, independent of context and setting, which might be associated with success in implementing and sustaining QI systems in health care organizations., Methods: We convened an international group of investigators to explore the issues of organizational culture and QI in different health care contexts and settings. This group met in person 3 times and held a series of conference calls to discuss emerging ideas over 2 years. Investigators also conducted pilot studies in their home countries to examine the applicability of our conceptual model., Results and Conclusions: We suggest that organizational coherence may be a critical element of QI efforts in health care organizations and propose that there are 3 key components of organizational coherence: (1) people, (2) processes, and (3) perspectives. Our work suggests that the concept of organizational coherence embraces both culture and context and can thus help guide both researchers and practitioners in efforts to enhance health care QI efforts, regardless of organizational type, location, or context.