Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Adoption Of Medication Management Technologies By U.S. Acute Care Hospitals After The Hitech Act, Aastha Chandak

Theses & Dissertations

Medication errors and adverse drug events (ADEs) are a significant public health concern in the United States as they pose a threat to patient safety. The medication management process is a complicated process in U.S. acute care hospitals, consisting of a series of steps such as ordering, transcribing, dispensing and administration and each step is prone to medication errors.The use of technology is considered to be an important intervention in improving the medication management process and thereby reducing medication errors and ADEs and further improve patient safety. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, implemented in …

The Impact Of Electronic Health Records On Healthcare Service Delivery, Patient Safety, And Quality, Kate Elizabeth Trout

Theses & Dissertations

The HITECH Act has provided over $30 billion of support through the Meaningful Use program to implement Electronic Health Records (EHRs) with aims to improve healthcare service delivery, efficiency, quality, and patient safety. New healthcare models, such as pay-for-performance and value-based purchasing, were envisioned to aligning quality with reimbursement mediated with the use of EHRs. It is unclear of how EHRs and Meaningful Use have impacted health service delivery, patient safety, and quality of care. Thus, making it difficult to determine if the specific set of objectives for Meaningful Use have had a positive impact on outcomes, which ultimately is …

Modifiable Barriers To Optimal Outcomes In Gout Management, Brian W. Coburn

Theses & Dissertations

Improving patient outcomes in chronic disease is of critical importance to the future of health care. Gout, affecting 4% of the US population, is a highly treatable chronic disease from which patients experience unnecessarily suboptimal outcomes. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how interrelated patient and provider factors affect patient outcomes in gout. First, I describe how only 14% of gout patients know their serum urate (SU) goal for urate lowering therapy (ULT) despite otherwise being knowledgeable about gout and its treatment. I then demonstrate the importance of multiple patient and provider factors in achieving SU goal. Specifically, I demonstrate that …

Essays On Immigration-Related Disparities In Health Behavior And Health Care Utilization, Yang Wang

Theses & Dissertations

The number of immigrants in the United States has recently been increasing significantly. Immigrants may experience some worse health outcomes than natives, due to substantial legal and socioeconomic barriers. Many immigration-related disparities in health behavior and health care utilization still remain unexplored. This dissertation comprises of 3 independent studies examining such disparities across immigration status, including (1) E-cigarette use and acculturation effects; (2) Cancer-related office-based medical provider visits among cancer patients; and (3) Potentially preventable emergency department visits.

Two nationally representative data sources included National Health Interview Survey and Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. We categorized the respondents into three immigration …