Medical interpreters are crucial to ensure fair and high-quality healthcare for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). Despite the need to use high-quality medical interpreters to communicate with LEP patients, medical schools often do not adequately educate their students on how to work with interpreters. This study seeks to investigate…

Health Information Technology (Health IT) is designed to store patients' records safely and clearly, to reduce input errors and missing records, and to make communications more efficiently. Concerned with the relatively lower adoption rate among the US hospitals compared to most developed countries, the Bush Administration set up the Office of…

The purpose of this project was to determine the effectiveness of the Helping Administer to the Needs of the Student with Diabetes in Schools (H.A.N.D.S.?) continuing education program in improving the level of experience and competence in performing services associated with diabetes care. This program is a live course for school nurses providing…

Context: Pregnant women in rural areas may give birth in either rural or urban hospitals. Differences in outcomes between rural and urban hospitals may influence patient decision making. Purpose: Trends in rural and urban obstetric deliveries and neonatal and maternal mortality in California were compared to inform policy development and patient…

In the selective contracting era, consumer choice has generally been absent in most state Medicaid programs, including California's (called Medi-Cal). In a setting where beneficiary exit is not a threat, a large payer may have both the incentives and the ability to exercise undue market power, potentially exposing an already vulnerable population…

To determine whether lack of medical insurance was associated with adverse health outcomes, this study examined hospital data on newborns in California's San Francisco Bay Area. The study also sought to determine which ethnic groups were most at risk. Computerized data on all civilian acute-care hospitalizations in the study area were obtained for…

Ten authors' viewpoints about preparing healthy children for possible hospitalization are presented. Selected topics include (1) the fallacy of "preparing" young healthy children for possible hospitalization, (2) parents as the best preparers of young children, (3) preparing young children for unplanned hospital admissions, (4) anxiety…

In 1990, a telephone survey was conducted of health services offered by California's community colleges. Statewide, 42 of the 71 districts in California levied a health service fee, 18 districts offered services without charge, and 11 offered no service. Districts operating programs collected an average of $15.81 in student fees per credit average…

As part of a series of reports designed to support the implementation of Proposition 10: The California Children and Families Act and to provide comprehensive and authoritative information on critical issues concerning young children and families in California, this report examines how child health services can be improved to support two related…

In California, school districts are categorized as public health screening centers and are required to have school doctors or school nurse practitioners provide complete physical examination services. A survey was conducted in a school district with an enrollment of about 12,000 students to determine parental attitudes toward this service, and…

A study evaluated the impact of the reorganization of the academic Sepulveda (California) Veterans' Administration medical center toward primary and ambulatory care. Surveys of several thousand patients were linked to computerized utilization and mortality data and related to the center's strategic plan and goals. Substantial improvement in…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the content-specificity of communication skills. It investigates the reliability and dimensionality of standardized patient (SP) ratings of communication skills in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination(OSCE) for final year medical students. An OSCE consisting of seven standardized patient(SP)…

The process of change at the academic Sepulveda (California) Veterans' Administration hospital during implementation of a new ambulatory primary care program was examined through individual or focus group interviews with 63 managers, house officers, and patients. Major problems included administrative integration of in- and outpatient services;…