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A study was conducted to evaluated the association between length of stay and short-term outcomes among Medicare older patients hospitalized for heart failure. Results indicated that with a reduced length of hospital stay 30-day mortality decreased; however, posthospital readmission and mortality risk increased.

Cross-sectional analyses of data from Medicare administrative claims for all fee-for-service beneficiaries hospitalized between 2004 and 2006 in acute care hospitals in US was conducted to determine the association between hospital volume threshold and the death rate for patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia. Admission to higher-volume hospitals was found to be associated with a reduction in mortality for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia, but volume threshold above which an increased condition-specific hospital was not significantly associated with reduced mortality.

The article discusses a study on the use of hierarchical regression models in assessing the rates of risk-standardized mortality and readmission of patients with heart failure in hospitals identified in the "America's Best Hospitals" ranking by the periodical "U.S. News & World Report" and in those non-ranked facilities. The study noted there was a reduced mean rate of in-hospital mortality in ranked hospitals, compared to non-ranked ones. It is said that ranked hospitals have not shown enough evidence of superiority for readmission.

Decades of research shows that small firms are much less likely to offer health insurance than large firms, but less is known about differences among small employers. We examine this issue using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component with Administrative Records (MEPS-ICAR), a unique employer-employee linked data set that is constructed by matching the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component (MEPS-IC) to Internal Revenue Service administrative records and the Decennial Census. Multivariate analyses show that among firms with fewer than 50 workers, the probability that workers receive an insurance offer is positively associated with higher median workforce incomes, and conditional offers of dependent coverage increase when the majority of workers are married or from a family with at least three members. This first application of the MEPS-ICAR highlights the significance of workforce characteristics in shaping small employer insurance benefits and the data’s usefulness for expanding analyses of policy changes, wage-benefit tradeoffs, and health insurance benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]