Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Assessing Differences Between Early And Later Adopters Of Accountable Care Organizations Using Taxonomic Analysis, Frances M. Wu, Stephen M. Shortell, Valerie A. Lewis, Carrie H. Colla, Elliott S. Fisher

Dartmouth Scholarship

Objective. To compare early and later adopters of the accountable care organization (ACO) model, using the taxonomy of larger, integrated system; smaller, physician-led; and hybrid ACOs. Data sources. The National Survey of ACOs, Waves 1 and 2.

Studydesign. Clusteranalysisusingthetwo-stepclusteringapproach,validatedusing discriminant analysis. Wave 2 data analyzed separately to assess differences from Wave 1 and then data pooled across waves. Findings. Compared to early ACOs, later adopter ACOs included a greater breadth of provider group types and a greater proportion self-reported as integrated delivery systems. When data from the two time periods were combined, a three-cluster solution similar to the original cluster …

Two Boundaries Separate Borrelia Burgdorferi Populations In North America, Gabriele Margos, Jean I. Tsao, Santiago Castillo-Ramirez, Yvette A. Girard, Anne G. Hoen

Dartmouth Scholarship

Understanding the spread of infectious diseases is crucial for implementing effective control measures. For this, it is important to obtain information on the contemporary population structure of a disease agent and to infer the evolutionary processes that may have shaped it. Here, we investigate on a continental scale the population structure of Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme borreliosis (LB), a tick-borne disease, in North America. We test the hypothesis that the observed d population structure is congruent with recent population expansions and that these were preceded by bottlenecks mostly likely caused by the near extirpation in the 1900s …