Deck 28: Health Services Research

Question 1

Which of the following is the method of examining how medical practice varies across geographical areas?

A) Geographical analysis
B) Meta-analysis
C) Meta-synthesis
D) Small-area analysis

Answer 1

D

Question 2

The epidemiologic study of medical care is called which of the following?

A) Health services research
B) Biomedical research
C) Outcomes research
D) Healthcare surveillance

Answer 2

C

Question 3

According to what agency, blacks have the highest death rate and the shortest survival of any racial and ethnic group in the United States for most cancers?

A) American Medical Association
B) American Cancer Society
C) American Nurses Association
D) American Public Health Association

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Health service research studies the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of the healthcare system.

Question 5

There is greater variation in practice for some treatments compared to others, due in part to uncertainty about the efficacy of some treatments.

Question 6

Bringing outside pressure and scrutiny to medical practice in one geographic area can help to reduce costs, as happened in El Paso, Texas, in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Question 7

Several large-scale studies have shown that carotid endarterectomy has been greatly overused in some places.

Question 8

In general, more supply of some medical services, such as surgery or CAT scans, will lead to more use.

Question 9

The level at which surgeons are reimbursed by Medicare for particular procedures, such as complex spinal fusions, has been shown to influence the rate at which those procedures are performed.

Question 10

Until the practice was outlawed by the U.S. Congress, physicians who owned an interest in clinical laboratories were less likely to refer patients for laboratory tests than similar physicians who referred patients to labs in which they had no financial interest.

Question 11

The solution to the uncertainties raised by small-area analysis is to study outcomes of the various diagnostic and treatment approaches in order to determine what works.

Question 12

Outcomes research is the epidemiologic study of medical care.

Question 13

______________________ attempts to understand the reasons for the observed variations in medical practice and to determine what treatments lead to the most desirable outcomes.

Question 14

The correlation of the rates at which Medicare patients die in the hospital correlate closely with the number of hospital beds per thousand residents in their community is known as the _________________.

Question 15

what the appropriate description of the agency ?
-An independent panel of experts appointed and funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Question 16

what the appropriate description of the agency ?
-Established in 1989 hoping that studies would encourage a reduction in high-technology medicine and save money on medical costs, especially for Medicare and Medicaid

Question 17

what the appropriate description of the agency ?
-Sets national goals, tracks progress, develops a research agenda, evaluates methods for identifying and preventing errors, and disseminates information

Question 18

what the appropriate description of the agency ?
-Published an evaluation of progress in implementing the Institute of Medicine report's recommendations 10 years later

Question 19

In a study conducted by Dartmouth researchers, what type of data was used to compare two cohorts of men who live in areas with different practice patterns for screening and treatment?

A) Epidemiologic data
B) Census data
C) Medicaid data
D) Medicare data

Question 20

Four years after its "near-death experience", what agency had regained all the funding it lost and the agency's budget has held roughly steady at over twice the original level through 2015?

A) U.S. Preventive Task Force
B) Agency for Health Care Policy and Research
C) Center for Patient Safety
D) Consumers Union

Question 21

Which of the following has documented extensive evidence that the delivery of medical care is inequitable and that ethnic and racial minorities may receive poorer quality care than do white Americans?

A) Outcomes research
B) Epidemiologic surveillance
C) Health services research
D) Biomedical research

Question 22

It is clear that the variability in the use of different treatments reflects the degree of uncertainty facing physicians regarding their relative efficacy.

Question 23

The evidence suggests that, for many medical conditions, there is only one appropriate response or treatment.

Question 24

The rise of preventive medicine contributed to an increasing interest in the measurement of the quality and efficiency, or cost-effectiveness, of medical care.

Question 25

_____________________ called attention to the lack of scientific evidence on which doctors and patients base decisions about how various medical conditions should be treated.

Question 26

Controlled clinical trials are one form of ______________________, but there are practical, financial, and ethical barriers that prevent conducting controlled trials aimed at answering many important questions about medical care.

Question 27

Managed care companies have a financial incentive to do ______________________ for their patients.

Question 28

Due in part to the increased availability to patients of medical information both within normal channels and from other sources, patients are increasingly becoming ______________________ participants in their own care.

Question 29

Managed care plans can now be accredited through a program from the ______________________.

Question 30

In practice, even if not overtly, medical care is rationed according to the ability to ______________________.

Question 31

A 1999 study of Medicare fee-for-service coverage showed whites receiving coronary artery bypass surgery at more than ______________________ the rate of blacks.

Question 32

Whats the appropriate state of the occurrence?
-Nearly 70 percent of the children had their tonsils removed by the time they were 15 years old

Question 33

Whats the appropriate state of the occurrence?
-60 percent of the male population of one community had their prostate glands removed by age 85

Question 34

Whats the appropriate state of the occurrence?
-Rates at which women underwent hysterectomy varied from 20 percent to 70 percent

Question 35

Whats the appropriate state of the occurrence?
-Rates of bariatric surgery to treat obesity were 9 per 100,000

Question 36

Whats the appropriate description of the following?
-Allocated $1.1 billion to the AHRQ, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct research

Question 37

Whats the appropriate description of the following?
-Aimed at helping patient to make better-informed healthcare decisions

Question 38

Whats the appropriate description of the following?
-Was asked to investigate and recommend a strategy that would lead to improvements in quality of care

Question 39

Whats the appropriate description of the following?
-Has an accreditation process to rate managed care plans on their performance with respect to a number of standards