e Chapters

Safety and e1 TheHealth Care Quality ofDavid W. BatesThe safety and quality of care are two of the central dimensions of health care. It is increasingly clear that both could be much better, and in recent years it has become easier to measure both safety and quality. In addition, the public iswith good justicationdemanding measurement and accountability, and increasingly payment for services will be based on performance in these areas. Thus, physicians must learn about these two domains, how they can be improved, and the relative strengths and limitations of our current ability to measure them. Safety and quality are closely related but do not completely overlap. The Institute of Medicine has suggested in a seminal series of reports that safety is the rst part of quality, and that health care rst must guarantee that it will deliver safe care, although quality is also pivotal. In the end, it is likely that more net clinical benet may be derived from improving quality than safety, though both are important, and safety is in many ways more tangible to the public. Accordingly, the rst section of this chapter will address issues relating to the safety of care, while the second will cover quality of care. SAFETY IN HEALTH CARE Safety Theory Safety theory clearly points out that individuals make errors all the time. Think of driving home from the hospital; you intend to stop and pick up a quart of milk on your way home, but you nd yourself entering your driveway, without realizing how you got there. We all use low-level, semi-automatic behavior for many of our activities in daily life; this kind of error is called a slip. Slips occur often during care delivery; e.g., when someone intends to write an order but forgets because they have to complete another action rst. Mistakes, by contrast, are errors of a higher level; they occur in new or non-stereotypic situations in which conscious decisions are being made. An example would be in dosing a medication with which the physician is not familiar. The strategies used to prevent slips and mistakes are often different. Another theory relating to errors is human factors theory, which describes how activities are carried out and offers a variety of insights into how to make them safer and more reliable. Systems theory suggests that most accidents occur as the result of a series of small failures, which happen to line up in an individual instance such that an accident can occur (Fig. e1-1). It also suggests that most individuals in an industry such as health care are trying to do the right thing (e.g., deliver safe care), and most accidents can be seen as the result of defects in the systems. Correspondingly, systems should be designed both to make errors less likely and to identify those that do occur, as some inevitably will. Factors That Increase the Likelihood of Errors A number of factors ubiquitous in health care systems can increase the likelihood of errors, including fatigue, stress, interruptions, complexity, and transitions. The effects of fatigue in other industries are clear, but its effects in health care have until recently been more controversial. For example, the accident rate in truck drivers increases dramatically if they work over a certain number of hours in a week, and especially with prolonged shifts. A recent study of house ofcers in the intensive care unit demonstrated that they were about one-third more likely to make errors when they were on a 24-h shift than when they were on a schedule that allowed them to sleep 8 h the previous night. The American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has moved to address this issue by putting in place the 80-h work week. While this is a step forward, it does not address the most important cause of fatigue-related errors, i.e., extended-duty shifts. High levels of stress and workload can also increase error rates. Thus, in extremely high-pressure situations, such as cardiac arrests, errors are more likely to occur. Strategies

e1Hazards Some holes due to active failures

CHAPTER e1The Safety and Quality of Health Care

Other holes due to latent conditions (resident "pathogens") Losses Succesive layers of defenses, barriers and safeguards

FIGURE e1-1 Swiss cheese diagram. Reason has argued that most accidents occur when a series of latent failures in a system are present, and that they happen to line up in a given instance, resulting in an accident. Examples of latent failures in the case of a fall might be that the unit was unusually busy that day, and that the floor happened to be wet. (Adapted from J Reason: Human error: Models and management. BMJ 320:768770, 2000; with permission.) such as using protocols in these settings can be helpful, as can simply recognizing that the situation is stressful. Interruptions also increase the likelihood of error and are frequent in health care delivery. It is common to forget to complete an action when one is interrupted partway through it by a page, for example. Approaches that may be helpful in this area include minimizing the use of interruptions and setting up tools that help dene the urgency of the interruption. In addition, complexity represents a key issue that contributes to errors. Providers are confronted by streams of data, such as laboratory tests and vital signs, many of which provide little useful information, but some of which are important and require action or suggest a specic diagnosis. Tools that emphasize specic abnormalities or combinations of abnormalities may be helpful in this area. Transitions between providers and settings are also frequent in health care, even more so with the advent of the 80-h work week, and generally represent vulnerabilities. Tools that provide structure in exchanging information, e.g., when transferring care between providers, may be helpful. The Frequency of Adverse Events in Health Care Most of the large studies focusing on the frequency and consequences of adverse events have been performed in the inpatient setting; some data are available for nursing homes, and much less information is available in the outpatient setting. The Harvard Medical Practice Study was one of the largest studies to address this issue, and was performed with hospitalized patients in New York. The primary outcome was the adverse event, which is an injury caused by medical management, rather than the patients underlying disease. In this study, an event either resulted in death or disability at discharge, or prolonged the length of stay by at least 2 days. Key ndings were that the adverse event rate was 3.7%, and 58% of adverse events were considered preventable. Although there was some concern that New York is not representative of the rest of the country, the study was replicated later in Colorado and Utah, where the rates were essentially similar. Since then, other studies have been performed in a variety of developed nations using analogous methodologies, and the rates in most countries appear to be ~10%. In the Medical Practice Study, adverse drug events (ADEs) were the most frequent type, accounting for 19% of adverse events, followed by wound infections (14%) and technical complications (13%). Almost half of the adverse events were associated with a surgical procedure. Among the nonoperative events, 37% were ADEs, 15% were diagnostic mishaps, 14% were therapeutic mishaps, 13% were procedurerelated, and 5% were falls. ADEs have been studied more than any other category. Studies focusing specically on ADEs have found that they appear to be much

Copyright 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.

e2 more frequent than was suggested by the Medical Practice Study, although most other studies use more inclusive criteria. Detection approaches in the research setting include chart review and use of a computerized ADE monitor, which is a tool that explores the database and identies signals that suggest an ADE may have occurred. Studies that use multiple approaches nd more ADEs than any individual approach, suggesting that the true underlying rate in the population is higher than would be identied by any individual approach. About 6 10% of patients admitted in U.S. hospitals suffer an ADE. Injuries caused by drugs are also frequent in the outpatient setting. One study found a rate of 21 ADEs per every 100 patients per year when patients were called to assess whether or not they had had a problem with one of their medications. The severity level was lower than in the inpatient setting, but approximately one-third of the ADEs were preventable. Another area that appears to be very risky is the period immediately after the patient is discharged from the hospital. One recent study of patients hospitalized on a medical service found an adverse event rate of 19%; about a third of these were preventable, and another third were ameliorable in that they could have been made less severe. ADEs were the single leading category. Prevention Strategies Most of the work on adverse event prevention strategies has targeted specic types of adverse events in the inpatient setting, with ADEs and nosocomial infections having received the most attention. For ADEs, several strategies have been found to reduce the medication error rate, although it has been harder to demonstrate that they reduce the ADE rate, and studies with adequate power to demonstrate a clinically meaningful reduction have not been published as yet. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) linked with clinical decision support has been found to reduce the serious medication error rateserious medication errors are those that harm someone or have the potential to do so. In one study, CPOE, even with limited decision support, decreased the serious medication error rate by 55%. CPOE can prevent medication errors by suggesting a default dose, ensuring that all orders are complete (e.g., include a dose, route, and frequency), and checking orders for allergies, drug-drug interactions, and drug-laboratory issues. In addition, clinical decision support can suggest the right dose for the patient, tailoring it to the patients level of renal function and age. In one study, without decision support patients with renal insufciency received the appropriate dose only one-third of the time, while this fraction increased to approximately two-thirds with decision support, and patients with renal insufciency were discharged from the hospital one-half day earlier. As of 2006, only about 15% of U.S. hospitals had implemented CPOE, but many more have plans to do so. Another technology that can improve medication safety is bar-coding linked with an electronic medication administration record. Barcoding can help ensure that the right patient gets the right medication at the right time. Electronic medication administration records can make it much easier to determine what medications a patient has received. Studies to assess the impact of bar-coding on medication safety are underway, and the early results are promising. Another technology that can be used to improve the safety of medication administration is smart pumps. These are pumps that can be instructed in which medication is being given, and at what dose; if the nurse tries to administer too high a dose, he or she will receive a warning. Non-technology-oriented interventions can also be highly effective. For example, having a pharmacist round with the team in the intensive care unit has been shown to decrease the ADE frequency substantially in that setting; this oversight is now a Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requirement. The National Picture around Safety Several organizations, including the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the JCAHO, have made recommendations about how to improve safety. In particular, the NQF has released recommendations to the countrys hospitals about what

practices will most improve the safety of care, which all hospitals are expected to implement (Table e1-1). Many of these practices arise frequently in routine care. One example is readback, which is the practice of recording all verbal orders and immediately reading them back to the physician to verify the accuracy of what was heard. Another is to use only standard abbreviations and dose designations, since some abbreviations and dose designations are particularly prone to error; for example, 7U may be read as 70. Measurement of Safety Measuring the safety of care is quite difcult and expensive, since adverse events are fortunately rare. Most hospitals rely on spontaneous reporting to identify errors and adverse events, but this approach has a very low sensitivity, with only ~1 in 20 ADEs reported. There are promising research techniques that involve searching the electronic record for signals suggesting that an adverse event has occurred, which will likely be routine in the future but are not yet in wide use. Claims data have been used to identify the frequency of adverse events; this approach works much better for surgical care than for medical care and still requires additional validation. The net result is that except for a few specic types of events, such as falls and nosocomial infections, hospitals have little idea about the true frequency of safety issues. Nonetheless, all providers have the responsibility to report problems with safety as they are identied. All hospitals have spontaneous reporting systems, and if providers report events as they occur, these events can be used as lessons for subsequent improvement. Conclusions about Safety It is now abundantly clear that the safety of health care can be improved substantially; as more areas are studied closely, more problems are identied. Compared to the outpatient setting, much more is known about the epidemiology of safety in the inpatient setting, and a number of effective strategies for improving safety have been identied and are being used increasingly. Some effective strategies are also available in the outpatient setting. Transitions appear to be especially risky. The solutions to improving care will often involve leveraging information technology, but they will also involve many other domains, such as use of human factors techniques, team training, and building a culture of safety. QUALITY IN HEALTH CARE Quality of care has remained somewhat elusive, although the tools for measuring it have increasingly improved. Selecting health care and measuring its quality is a complex process. Quality Theory Donabedian has suggested that quality of care can be divided by type of measurement into structure, process, and outcome. Structure refers to whether or not a particular characteristic is present, e.g., whether a hospital has a catheterization laboratory or whether a clinic uses an electronic health record. Process refers to the way that care is delivered, and examples of process measures are whether a Pap smear was performed at the recommended interval or whether an aspirin was given to a patient with a suspected myocardial infarction. Outcomes refer to what actually happens, e.g., the mortality rate in myocardial infarction. It is important to note that good structure and process do not always result in good outcomes. For instance, a patient may present with a suspected myocardial infarction to an institution with a catheterization laboratory and receive recommended care, including aspirin, but still die because of their infarction. Quality theory also suggests that overall quality will be improved more in the aggregate by raising the level of performance of all providers rather than nding a few poor performers and punishing them. This view suggests that systems changes are especially likely to be helpful in improving quality, since large numbers of providers may be affected simultaneously. The theory of continuous quality improvement suggests that organizations should be evaluating the care they deliver on an on-going basis and continually making small changes to improve their individual processes. This approach can be very powerful if embraced over time.

PART 1Introduction to Clinical Medicine


TABLE e1-1 SAFE PRACTICES FOR BETTER HEALTH CARE a1. Create a health care culture of safety. 2. For designated high-risk, elective surgical procedures or other specified care, patients should be clearly informed of the likely reduced risk of an adverse outcome at treatment facilities that have demonstrated superior outcomes and should be referred to such facilities in accordance with the patients stated preference. 3. Specify an explicit protocol to be used to ensure an adequate level of nursing based on the institutions usual patient mix and the experience and training of its nursing staff. 4. All patients in general intensive care units (both adult and pediatric) should be managed by physicians having specific training and certification in critical care medicine (critical care certified). 5. Pharmacists should actively participate in the medication-use process, including, at a minimum, being available for consultation with prescribers on medication ordering, interpretation and review of medication orders, preparation of medications, dispensing of medications, and administration and monitoring of medications. 6. Verbal orders should be recorded whenever possible and immediately read back to the prescriberi.e., a health care provider receiving a verbal order should read or repeat back the information that the prescriber conveys in order to verify the accuracy of what was heard. 7. Use only standardized abbreviations and dose designations. 8. Patient care summaries or other similar records should not be prepared from memory. 9. Ensure that care information, especially changes in orders and new diagnostic information, is transmitted in a timely and clearly understandable form to all of the patients current health care providers who need that information to provide care. 10. Ask each patient or legal surrogate to recount what he or she has been told during the informed consent discussion. 11. Ensure that written documentation of the patients preference for life-sustaining treatments is prominently displayed in his or her chart. 12. Implement a computerized prescriber order entry system. 13. Implement a standardized protocol to prevent the mislabeling of radiographs. 14. Implement standardized protocols to prevent the occurrence of wrong-site procedures or wrongpatient procedures. 15. Evaluate each patient undergoing elective surgery for risk of an acute ischemic cardiac event during surgery, and provide prophylactic treatment of high-risk patients with beta blockers. 16. Evaluate each patient upon admission, and regularly thereafter, for the risk of developing pressure ulcers. This evaluation should be repeated at regular intervals during care. Clinically appropriate preventive methods should be implemented consequent to the evaluation. 17. Evaluate each patient upon admission, and regularly thereafter, for the risk of developing deep vein thrombosis (DVT)/venous thromboembolism (VTE). Utilize clinically appropriate methods to prevent DVT/VTE. 18. Utilize dedicated anti-thrombotic (anti-coagulation) services that facilitate coordinated care management. 19. Upon admission, and regularly thereafter, evaluate each patient for the risk of aspiration. 20. Adhere to effective methods of preventing central venous catheterassociated bloodstream infections. 21. Evaluate each preoperative patient in light of his or her planned surgical procedure for the risk of surgical site infection, and implement appropriate antibiotic prophylaxis and other preventive measures based on that evaluation. 22. Utilize validated protocols to evaluate patients who are at risk for contrast media-induced renal failure, and utilize a clinically appropriate method for reducing risk of renal injury based on the patients kidney function evaluation. 23. Evaluate each patient upon admission, and regularly thereafter, for risk of malnutrition. Employ clinically appropriate strategies to prevent malnutrition. 24. Whenever a pneumatic tourniquet is used, evaluate the patient for the risk of an ischemic and/or thrombotic complication, and utilize appropriate prophylactic measures. 25. Decontaminate hands with either a hygienic hand rub or by washing with a disinfectant soap prior to and after direct contact with the patient or objects immediately around the patient. 26. Vaccinate health care workers against influenza to protect both them and patients from influenza. 27. Keep workspaces where medications are prepared clean, orderly, well lit, and free of clutter, distraction, and noise. 28. Standardize the methods for labeling, packaging, and storing medications. 29. Identify all high alert drugs (e.g., intravenous adrenergic agonists and antagonists, chemotherapy agents, anticoagulants and anti-thrombotics, concentrated parenteral electrolytes, general anesthetics, neuromuscular blockers, insulin and oral hypoglycemics, narcotics and opiates). 30. Dispense medications in unit-dose or, when appropriate, unit-of-use form, whenever possible.

processes, making this tool especially impor- e3 tant for improvement.

CHAPTER e1The Safety and Quality of Health Care

Factors Relating to Quality Many factors can decrease the level of quality, including stress to providers, high or low levels of production pressure, and poor systems, to name but a few examples. Stress can adversely affect quality because it can lead providers to omit important steps, as can a high level of production pressure. Low levels of production pressure can also sometimes result in worse quality, as providers may be bored or have little experience with a specic problem. Poor systems can have a tremendous impact on quality, and even extremely dedicated providers typically cannot achieve high levels of performance if they are operating within a poor system. Data about the Current State of Quality A recent RAND study has provided the most complete picture of quality of care delivered in the United States to date. The results were sobering. The authors found that across a wide range of quality parameters, patients in the United States received only 55% of recommended care overall; there was little variation by subtype, with scores of 54% for preventive care, 54% for acute care, and 56% for care of chronic conditions, leading the authors to conclude that the chances of getting highquality care in the United States broadly were little better than those of winning a coin ip.

Strategies for Improving Quality and Performance A number of specic strategies can be used to improve quality at the individual level, including rationing, education, feedback, incentives, and penalties. Rationing has been effective in some specic areas, such as convincing physicians to prescribe within a formulary, but it generally has been resisted. Education is effective in the short run and is necessary for changing opinions, but its effect decays fairly rapidly with time. Feedback on performance can be given either at the group or individual level. Feedback is most effective if it is individualized and if it is given in close temporal proximity to the original events. Incentives can be effective, and many believe that this will be a key to improving quality, especially if pay-for-performance with sufcient incentives is broadly implemented (see below). Penalties produce provider resentment and are rarely used in health care. a These 30 practices are the recommendations from the National Quality Forum (NQF) for improving the safety of Another set of strategies for improving quality involves changing the systems of care. An exhealth care; the NQF believes these should be universally utilized in applicable care settings to reduce the risk of patient harm. The practices all have strong supporting evidence and are likely to have a significant benefit. ample would be introducing reminders about which specic actions need to be taken at a visit for a specic patient, which is a strategy that has A number of specic tools have been developed to help improve been demonstrated to improve performance in certain situations, e.g., in process performance. One of the most important of these tools is delivery of preventive services. Another approach that has been effective the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle (Fig. e1-2). This approach can be is the development of bundles or groups of quality measures that can used to perform what is called rapid cycle improvement for a pro- be implemented together with a high degree of delity. A number of hoscess, e.g., the time for a patient with pneumonia to receive antibi- pitals have now implemented a bundle for ventilator-associated pneumootics after diagnosis. Often, specic statistical tools, such as control nia in the intensive care unit, which includes ve measures, including, for charts, are used in conjunction to determine whether or not example, ensuring that the head of the bed is elevated. The hospitals have progress is being made. Most medical care comprises one or many found that they were able to substantially improve performance.Copyright 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.

e4

Adopt or abandon strategies based on results

A

ct

Pl

an

Identify potential improvement strategies

ChMeasure effectiveness of strategies

Do

ec k

Try out strategies

FIGURE e1-2 Plan-do-check-act (or PDCA) cycle. The PDCA cycle approach can be used to improve a specific process rapidly. First, planning is performed, and several potential improvement strategies are identified. Next, these strategies are trialed in small tests of change. Checking is measuring whether or not they appeared to make a difference, and act refers to acting on the results. Perhaps the most pressing need is to improve the quality of care for chronic diseases. The Chronic Care Model has been developed by Wagner and colleagues (Fig. e1-3); it suggests that a combination of strategies will be necessary, including self-management support, changes in delivery system design, decision support, and information systems, and that these must be delivered by a practice team composed of several providers, not just a physician. Recent evidence about the relative efcacy of strategies in reducing hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) in outpatient diabetes care (Fig. e1-4) supports this general premise. It is especially notable that the outcome was HbA1c, as it has generally been much more difcult to improve outcome measures than process measures (such as whether a HbA1c was performed). In this meta-analysis, a variety of strategies were effective, but the most effective ones were the use of team changes and use of a case manager. When cost-effectiveness is considered in addition, it appears likely that an amalgam of strategies will be needed. However, the more expensive strategies, such as use of case managers, will likely be implemented widely only if pay-for-performance takes hold.

National State of Quality Measurement In the inpatient setting, quality measurement is now being performed by a very large proportion of hospitals for several conditions, including myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical infection prevention; 20 measures are included in all. This is the result of the Hospital Quality Initiative, which represents a collaboration among many entities, including the Hospital Quality Alliance, the JCAHO, the NQF, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, among others. The data are housed at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which publicly releases performance on the measures on a website called Hospital Compare. These data are voluntarily reported and are available for a very high proportion of the nations hospitals; they were rst released in April 2006. Early analyses demonstrate that there is substantial regional variation in quality and that there are important differences among hospitals. Analyses by the Joint Commission for very similar indicators demonstrate that performance on measures by hospitals did improve over time, and that, as might be hoped, lower performers improved more than higher performers. Analogous national data for ambulatory care are not yet available, but a group called the Ambulatory care Quality Alliance (AQA) has been formed and is developing an analogous set of measures. Public Reporting Overall, public reporting of quality data is becoming increasingly common. There are now commercial websites that have quality-related data for most regions of the country that can be accessed for a fee. Similarly, national data for hospitals are available. The evidence to date is that patients have not used such data very much, but that such data have had an important effect on provider and organization behavior. Instead, patients have relied on provider reputation to make choices. Part of the reason for this choice basis is that until very recently little information was available, and it was not necessarily represented in ways that were easy for patients to access. Many believe that as more information about quality becomes available, it will become increasingly central to patient choices about where to access care. Pay-for-Performance Currently, providers in the United States get paid exactly the same amount for a specic service regardless of what quality care is delivered. The theory of pay-for-performance suggests that if providers are paid more for higher-quality care, they will invest in strategies that enable them to deliver that care. The current key issues in the pay-for-performance debate relate to (1) how effective it is, (2) what levels of incentives are needed, and (3) what perverse consequences are produced. The evidence about effectiveness is fairly limited to date, although a number of studies are ongoing. With respect to levels, most performance incentives around quality have accounted for merely 12% of total payment in this country to date, but in the United Kingdom, 40% of general practitioners salaries have recently been placed at risk based on performance across a wide array of parameters. This has been associated with large improvements in reported quality performance, although it is still unclear as to what extent this represents better performance versus better reporting. The potential for perverse consequences exists with any incentive scheme. One problem is that if incentives are tied to outcomes, this introduces the incentive to transfer the sickest patients to other providers and systems. Another concern is that providers will pay too much attention to quality measures with incentives, and ignore the rest of the quality picture. The validity of these concerns remains to be determined. CONCLUSIONS The safety and quality of care in the United States could be improved substantially. A number of interventions are available today that have been demonstrated to improve the safety of care and should be used more widely; others are undergoing evaluation or will be evaluated. Quality could also be dramatically better, and the science of quality improvement is increasingly mature. Implementation of pay-forperformance should make it much easier for organizations to justify investments in improving these parameters, including health informa-

PART 1Introduction to Clinical MedicineCommunityResources and policies Selfmanagement Support

Health SystemOrganization of health care Delivery system design Decision support Clinical information systems

Informed, activated patient

Productive interactions

Prepared, proactive practice team

Improved Outcomes FIGURE e1-3 The chronic care model. The chronic care model, which focuses on improving care for chronic diseases, suggests that delivery of high-quality care demands a range of strategies that must closely involve and engage the patient, and, in addition, that team care is essential. (From Wagner et al: Eff Clin Pract 1:2, 1998.)


Quality Improvement Strategy Team changes Case management Patient reminders Patient education Electronic patient registry Clinician education

No. of Trials 26 26 14 38 8 20 15 20 9 18 3 66 1.0

Favors intervention

Favors control

Facilitated relay of clinical information Self-management Audit and feedback Clinician reminders Continuous quality improvement All interventions

much more robust; it would be particularly useful e5 if organizations had measures that they could use in routine operations to assess safety at reasonable cost. While the quality measures available are more robust than those for safety, they still cover a relatively small proportion of the entire domain of quality, and more need to be developed. The public and payers are now demanding better information about safety and quality, as well as better performance in these areas. The clear implication is that these domains will need to be addressed directly by providers.

CHAPTER e1

The Safety and Quality of Health Care

FURTHER READINGS0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.2 0.4

BATES DW et al: Effect of computerized physician order entry and a team intervention on prevenDifference in postintervention HbA1c, % tion of serious medication errors. JAMA 280:1311, 1998 FIGURE e1-4 The efficacy of various strategies for improving diabetes care in outpatients. Shojania et al. performed a meta-analysis of evaluating the efficacy of strategies BRENNAN TA et al: Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalized patients: Results for reducing hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) in diabetic outpatients; they found that team from the Harvard Medical Practice Study I. N changes and case management had the largest impact on HbA1c, although there was a Engl J Med 324:370, 1991 trend toward improvement for many strategies. Interventions in which nurse or pharmacist case managers can make medication adjustments without awaiting physician autho- MCGLYNN EA et al: The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States. N Engl J rization resulted in the largest reductions. (From Shojania et al: JAMA 296:427, 2006.) Med 348:2635, 2003 SHOJANIA KG et al: Effects of quality improvement tion technology; however, many will also require changing the strucstrategies for type 2 diabetes on glycemic control: A meta-regresture of care, e.g., moving to a more team-oriented approach, and sion analysis. JAMA 296:427, 2006 ensuring that the patients are more involved in their own care. The WAGNER EH et al: Improving chronic illness care: Translating evidence into action. Health Aff (Millwood) 20:64, 2001 measures of safety are still relatively immature and could be made


e2 Economic Considerations in the Practice of MedicineDavid MeltzerThe enormous and continuing growth of health care spending in the United States and many other countries over recent decades has focused attention on the causes, consequences, and possible responses to rising expenditures on health care. A variety of strategies to control costs have been developed that have made it increasingly important that physicians and other health care professionals understand a wide range of economic considerations in the practice of medicine. HEALTH CARE COSTS Between 1960 and 2005, health care spending in the United States increased from about $27 billion to $2.1 trillion. This growth in spending was about 23% higher per year than growth in the overall economy, causing health care spending to rise from 6% of gross domestic product to >16%. This increase in spending has produced enormous challenges for everyone who pays for health care. For government, these challenges include rising federal, state, and local government health care budgets, which have required increases in taxes. For rms and their workers, the biggest challenge is the high cost of insuring workers, which causes employers to drop (or reduce) health insurance coverage, to move jobs overseas, or to reduce wages. The rising cost of insurance coverage that is passed on to workers also increases rates of uninsurance, because some workers choose to forego insurance even when it is available or take jobs that do not offer insurance coverage. The increasing cost of medical care also raises the cost of any attempts through public policy to provide insurance coverage to the >45 million Americans who now lack health insurance. Increased outof-pocket costs for patients are also a common outgrowth of rising health care expenditures. Overall, about 1520% of health care costs are now paid out of pocket by consumers. Because some persons consume no health care, the fraction of health care costs paid out of pocket by persons who actually use health care is even higher, ~35% of their total health care costs. The combination of rising costs and high rates of uninsurance, along with the knowledge that many other developed countries spend only about half as much on health care yet are able to provide universal coverage and have health outcomes that are as good as or better than those in the United States, has understandably created widespread concern that the U.S. health care system is neither as efcient nor as effective as it could be. This, in turn, has produced many efforts to understand the causes of increased costs and to improve the delivery and nancing of health care in the United States. Causes of Rising Costs Many causes of the rise in health care costs have been suggested. An aging population is commonly cited but has actually contributed rather little to recent increases in per capita spending. One reason for this is that, unlike the large cohort of baby boomers who will reach old age in the coming years, the cohort of persons born during the Depression Era of the 1930s who have reached retirement age in recent years is relatively small, because birth rates were low during that depression. Another reason that aging has not contributed so greatly to increasing expenditures is that improving health during old age has tended to delay the onset of serious illness and high health care expenditures. Another commonly suggested cause of rising expenditures has been medical malpractice and resulting defensive medicine, but evidence suggests that this is not a large contributor to health care costs in the United States. Administrative costs have also have been suggested to play an important role and are probably at least 1015% of total costs for private insurance. Despite the signicant and rising number of persons who lack insurance in the United States, one possible cause of rising health care costs since 1960 for which there is strong evidence is the increasing in-

surance coverage of health care and resulting increases in demand for e7 health care. Some scholars date the growth in health insurance coverage to the beginning of World War II when an Internal Revenue Service ruling established that employer-provided health insurance would be exempt from personal income tax. Today, employer-sponsored health insurance provides insurance coverage for ~60% of Americans. The growth of Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance plans dates from this period of the establishment of employer-sponsored health insurance, and these plans formed a model for private health insurance in the United States. This was followed in the 1960s by the creation of Medicare and then Medicaid and a series of subsequent expansion of these programs. Nevertheless, based on data from the effects of health insurance coverage on the demand for health care, experts have estimated that these increases in insurance coverage account for only about one-quarter of the increase in health care spending since 1960. Instead, most health economists now believe that the primary cause of increasing spending on health care is the development of new technologies that, on average, offer improvements in health that are of substantial value to patients. An illustrative example of this is the cost of treating an acute myocardial infarction, which grew at ~5% annually in real terms over the mid-1980s and -1990s. This occurred at the same time that the cost of the individual major treatments for acute myocardial infarctionmedical management, brinolysis, percutaneous coronary intervention, and coronary bypass surgeryeither fell or increased minimally. The change in the overall cost occurred because the more expensive treatment options (e.g., revascularization) were increasingly used over the less expensive ones (e.g., medical management). Most economists have concluded that similar increases in the use of new technologies explain most of the increase in health care spending over this period. Estimates of the value of these increases in spending in terms of health indicate that on average they have yielded benets far in excess of their costs, suggesting that these changes are the result of expanding opportunities to produce increases in health that are valued well above the cost of producing them. However, a broad body of evidence also indicates that many new technologies are not worth their costs, and it has been suggested that the broad expansion of insurance coverage has increased the incentives to develop costly medical technologies, even when they are not worth their cost. These conclusions suggest that efforts to control the cost of health care must consider both immediate and longer-term effects and be acutely aware of the value of health that is produced. THE DEMAND FOR AND SUPPLY OF HEALTH CARE Demand and supply are the fundamental tools that economists use to analyze health care markets and the spending within them. The demand for health care derives ultimately from the desire of individuals to be healthy. Health economists think of health as a capital good (health capital) in the sense that it tends to be durable, so that health today contributes positively to health tomorrow. A logical consequence of this is that rational decisions about health involve thinking about benets and costs both in the present and in the future. Although individuals cannot buy health, they can buy health care that they hope will improve their health. Because health care costs can be high and variable, health insurance is desirable to protect against the risk of catastrophic costs that could otherwise lead to bankruptcy and/or to limit access to health care. Insurance can produce incentives to consume more medical care than individuals would purchase if they faced the true cost of care, but such inefciencies need to be balanced against the nancial and health risks of lacking insurance. Contractual limits on what insurance will cover are a strategy to address this tendency for excessive consumption but are often sources of controversy and patient dissatisfaction. One reason for this is that health care spending tends to be highly concentrated, with ~5% of the population accounting for 50% of total spending. This concentration of spending makes it difcult to use cost-sharing to control health care without having these costs fall heavily on a small fraction of individuals. Because simple across-the-board cost-sharing can produce unacceptable nancial risk, health care insurance is better constructed by

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Economic Considerations in the Practice of Medicine

Copyright 2008 by McGraw-Hill Company. All rights reserved.

e8 designing a package of benets that provides variable subsidies for access to different medical technologies that can improve health while leaving an acceptable level of nancial risk and an affordable annual premium. These tradeoffs are increasingly being put in the hands of consumers as they choose among health plans. This has the advantage of allowing consumer choice but can also result in adverse selection in which people choose insurance plans based on their personal needs but, in so doing, undermine the ability of insurance to spread costs and risk among patient groups. An example of adverse selection would be if a low-cost plan were chosen only by healthy individuals, leaving sicker persons alone in the high-cost plan, which might then become unaffordable. These types of concerns greatly complicate the creation of successful insurance markets. Medicare and Medicaid Medicare provides health insurance for almost all Americans age 65 and older. Established in 1965, Medicare covers both hospital care (part A) and physician fees (part B). In 2006 Medicare also began offering a prescription drug benet (part D). Insurance coverage within Medicare has some idiosyncrasies that, in part, reect its origins in being modeled based on private health insurance in the 1960s. These include lifetime caps on benets and copayment rates that are sometimes lower for low-use patients than for higher-use patients. Medicare beneciaries who can afford them can purchase supplemental Medicare (Medigap) policies that can sometimes ll these gaps in coverage. Medicare also interfaces with the Medicaid program to address the needs of lower income older persons, as discussed below. The Part D program in Medicare addresses a long-standing need to provide older persons with better access to pharmaceuticals. This program has a complicated benet structure, with varying copayment rates depending on an individuals prescription drug expenditures within the year. There are also signicant variations in the coverage provided by different plans, but online tools are available at www.medicare.gov to help patients and their families to make informed decisions. Medicare Advantage is a program developed by Medicare to provide managed care options for Medicare beneciaries. Patients in these programs generally give up exibility in the providers they can see without paying for visits themselves but benet from lower copayments for covered services or coverage for certain benets that traditional Medicare may not cover. Medicare also has a special program that provides health insurance coverage for persons with end-stage renal disease. Medicaid is an important source of insurance coverage for patients who lack private health insurance or Medicare and who cannot afford to purchase insurance on their own. Medicaid currently provides coverage to about 14% of the U.S. population. Like Medicare, Medicaid is managed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS). However, unlike Medicare, Medicaid is a federal-state partnership with funding that is shared, and there is a great deal of variation across states as to who is eligible and what benets are provided. In general, Medicaid tends to have lower copayments than other types of health insurance, which is important because of the limited income of the recipients of Medicaid. Older persons whose incomes and assets are low enough to qualify may be eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid (dual-eligible). One aspect of Medicaid coverage that is especially important for older persons and their families is that it pays for nursing home coverage for those whose income and assets are sufciently low. For patients and their families for whom high health care costs and insurance coverage are major concerns, referral to a social worker, patient advocate, or another expert in health care costs is among the most valuable things a physician can do to help protect the family from unnecessary economic hardship. SUPPLY OF HEALTH CARE Physicians, nurses and other health professionals, hospitals, manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and devices, and researchers all provide key inputs into the health care system. Health Professionals The economics of medical practice are shaped by the high level of investment in tuition and time (foregone earnings)

that physicians must make during their training. Typically, longer training periods are associated with higher earnings. Nevertheless, some specialties with the longest training periods still offer exceptionally high returns on investment. In a competitive market with free entry, one might expect the returns on investment to equalize across specialties as high earnings encourage more entrants into a eld and lowers average earnings. This tends not to happen because entry into medical specialties is often tightly controlled by a variety of accrediting agencies in collaboration with medical specialty societies. In addition, the large role of government as a payer in health care makes physician reimbursement a political issue in which lobbying and other strategies for specialty inuence play a role. In the past, physicians usually owned their own practices, but this is increasingly less common in the United States as physicians more often work as part of large groups or for health plans. These models sometimes pay doctors xed salaries, although incentives to see more patients are common. Incentives for physicians to provide services can lead to concerns about demand inducement, in which physicians provide more care than is desirable because of the nancial returns they receive from providing that care, but the evidence for this being common is not compelling. Legal constraints exist to prevent physicians from gaining economically from referring patients for the services of other providers. Nurses and other health professionals also have complex labor market issues. Often the boundaries of practice between different forms of training (e.g., ophthalmologists and optometrists or nurse practitioners and physician assistants) are not clear, and so there can be intense competition between, as well as within, specialty areas. Hospitals These are complex organizations that require expensive capital investments, a large and complex staff, and close ties with physicians. Most hospitals are not-for-prot (NFP), meaning that any surplus left at the end of each year must be reinvested in the hospital or the health of the community it serves. This contrasts with a for-prot (FP) hospital, which can return prots to shareholders and is not required to provide benets to its community in the same way as NFP hospitals are required to. NFP hospitals are exempt from many taxes, but there is active debate about whether NFP hospitals provide as much community benet as would be expected based on the subsidies that they receive. Hospital management in NFP hospitals is supervised by a board of directors that typically includes community, staff, and physician participation. In contrast, FP hospitals are managed by a corporate structure. However, managers in both NFP and FP hospitals use similar tools to analyze and improve the cost and quality of care they provide. Increasingly, management tools such as process mapping, human factors analysis, and continuous quality improvement approaches (e.g., plan-do-study-act cycles) are becoming essential tools of a modern physician leader. The Pharmaceutical and Device Industries The pharmaceutical industry and its close cousin, the medical device industry, are among the most important aspects of the modern health care system and supply many of the products most responsible for improvements in public health, such as medications to treat hypertension, immunizations, and devices such as joint replacements and articial lenses that allow the removal of cataracts. Concerns about the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, safety, direct-to-consumer advertising, and inappropriate marketing strategies have made the pharmaceutical industry and its regulators [e.g., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] the subject of a great deal of recent scrutiny. Another major concern is the rising costs of developing new drugs, which has recently been estimated to be in the vicinity of $1 billion per new chemical entity brought to market. The rising cost of prescription drugs and concern that prices charged in the United States are above those charged in other countries have led to calls for efforts to control drug pricing in the United States. Attempts to bring down the costs of prescription drugs both in the United States and internationally must balance their short-term effects on the cost of health care with longer-term effects on the incen-



tives to produce innovative new drugs and effects on access to patients within and across countries with varying incomes and ability to pay. Innovation Medical innovation is also produced by academia and government, often in close collaboration. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the source of the vast majority of federal funding for health research, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) a distant second and the Agency for Healthcare Research Quality (AHRQ) and a variety of other federal agencies further behind. NIH, CDC, and AHRQ support basic, translational, and clinical research as well as a wide range of programs to support the training and ongoing career development of researchers. There are also loan repayment programs to encourage entry into research careers. The federal government also supports academic medicine through extra payments to academic medical centers through Medicare. Teaching hospitals have traditionally made prots on their clinical care that have allowed them to subsidize their educational and research activities, but the increasingly competitive health care market place is making this progressively more difcult. Therefore, it is more important that research activities be supported by government, private foundations, philanthropy, or industry. Practice Variation Another major concern about health care spending is the large degree of variation in spending across small geographic areas around the United States. These variations in spending are due to variations in the rate at which expensive care is provided and yet do not appear to result in improved outcomes, suggesting that much of the excess utilization in high-cost areas is of little value. The causes of this excess utilization of services does not appear to result primarily from patient level factors or from differences in insurance coverage. Some have hypothesized that increased utilization of services results from increased capacity in some areas (if you build it, they will come). However, other experts have argued that variations in use across small areas may reect differences in physician beliefs about appropriate practice patterns that are shaped by the inuence of peers in their local area. COST-CONTROL STRATEGIES The rapid rise in health care costs over the past three decades has led to a variety of strategies to control costs. Some early programs focused on direct regulation of health care, such as the requirement that a certicate of need be issued by a local health authority before construction of a new medical facility can proceed. Other strategies have included direct regulation of payments through publicly established fee schedules for Medicare or Medicaid that often inuence private payment rates. Sometimes fee schedules have been created with multiple policy goals. One example is the resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS), which was developed with the intent to realign incentives to encourage physicians to enter needed medical specialties (such as primary care) and be rewarded based on the effort and complexity of the work they do. Prospective Payment This is probably the most important cost-control strategy that has been adopted in the United States. Under a prospective payment system, a health care provider is provided a xed amount of money to provide care for a patient over a specied episode of care. This contrasts with a retrospective reimbursement system, in which a provider is paid based on the amount of care they provide. The most important example of such a system has been the Medicare Prospective Payment system. This was established in 1983 and replaced the prior system, in which Medicare reimbursed hospitals based on the specic services they provided with a system that provided a xed payment for a hospital stay for any given diagnosis, classied according to one of several hundred diagnosis-related groups, or DRGs. This provided strong incentives to decrease hospital length of stay and costs and had large effects on hospital cost growth for several years. It was also coupled with the creation of Professional Review Organizations (PROs) that, among other things, sought to ensure that hospitals were acting appropriately in admitting patients according to

the criteria for each DRG, and providing quality care within that diag- e9 nosis. This linkage of quality improvement and payment policy was an important move in the history of Medicare, from serving merely as a payer to acting as an increasingly active manager of care. Pay for Performance Todays interest in pay for performance, in which providers receive higher reimbursement rates for care that meets specied quality indicators is an extension of this. Prospective payment is a key idea underlying the use of managed care organizations to control costs by providing a xed payment for providing care for a patient over a given period of time. Because managed care organizations are responsible for all of the care of the patient over this time period, they may have more incentives and ability to provide integrated care. Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and other managed care organizations may emphasize prevention as a key aspect of their strategy for managing care and controlling costs. However, the high rate at which individuals switch health care plans and the long period of time it takes for many preventive therapies (such as control of hypertension or diabetes) to exert their major benets suggest that economic incentives for at least some forms of prevention are unlikely to be strong, even in HMOs. This is one motivation for the use of report cards for health plans, which often report on the rate at which various preventive care goals are met. As with prospective payment of hospitals, successful implementation of managed care requires the ability to adjust payments to reect the underlying cost of care so that providers are not systematically penalized for caring for certain classes of patients. Likewise, development of tools to measure and reward the quality of care provided by managed care organization has arisen as a major priority for the eld of health outcomes research. Competition This has been another important strategy used to attempt to control costs. Competitive bidding for contracts in which only the low-price bidders are able to provide services, often called selective contracting, is now common in medical care and provides a powerful strategy to encourage providers to lower their prices and, accordingly, costs. Competition does not always lower costs, however. For example, when hospital reimbursement was retrospective, competition between hospitals tended to increase costs as hospitals provided more and more services to attract patients and were well reimbursed for them. In the era of prospective payment, competition has the opposite effect of lowering costs because hospitals can no longer charge insurers for added costs and because, with a xed reimbursement, hospitals can be more protable only if they lower their costs. The combination of competition and prospective payment may be particularly powerful in reducing costs but can also create incentives to decrease the amount of care provided to the sickest patients within a given category, the costs of whose care may often exceed reimbursement. For this reason, it is especially important that quality-of-care measures not neglect the special needs of the sickest patients. Consumer-Driven Care Another cost-containment strategy that has recently received increasing attention is the idea of consumer-driven care, in which patients select an insurance plan tailored to their personal needs, but often with more limited coverage of certain services. Given the evidence on the effect of health insurance on the demand for medical care, consumer-driven health care will likely have only a modest effect on overall health care demand over the short run. Nevertheless, it is possible that there could be much larger effects over time if greater consumer sensitivity to cost leads to changes in the way new technologies are developed and their use diffuses. It is also possiblethough still unproventhat the development of novel new insurance mechanisms, such as health savings accounts paired with high-deductible health insurance coverage for catastrophic care, could induce far more price sensitivity and cost control than was possible with traditional insurance arrangements. Cost-Effectiveness Analyses In making medical decisions, especially in making decisions when costs are a concern, cost-effectiveness analy-

CHAPTER e2

Economic Considerations in the Practice of Medicine

Copyright 2008 by McGraw-Hill Company. All rights reserved.

e10 sis and other approaches to technology assessment are an importantsource of evidence for decisions about when a medical technology is likely to be worthwhile. In cost-effectiveness analysis, the health benets and costs of a medical intervention are compared to one or more other options by calculating a ratio of costs (C) to effectiveness (E), where the C/E ratio = change in health benets/change in costs. Often benets will be measured using a metric of quality-adjusted life years, or QALYs, which is a measure of life expectancy in which each year of life is weighted with a number between 0 (death) and 1 (perfect health) reecting quality of life in that health state. In general, cost-effectiveness theory suggests that interventions that cost less than some threshold value per QALY (often $50,000/QALY or $100,000/QALY) would be considered cost-effective, though the appropriate threshold remains highly controversial. In countries (such as the United Kingdom) where cost-effectiveness analysis is used to inform coverage policy, it is most commonly used as part of a broader process of technology assessment that may incorporate other forms of evidence, including expert judgment and political concerns emanating from patient and providers, and from producers of new technologies. It is generally agreed that cost-effectiveness analysis take a societal perspective, accounting for all costs and benets of a medical intervention regardless of to whom they accrue. There is also a strong case to be made for considering multiple perspectives in a cost-effectiveness analysis. For example, a costeffectiveness analysis done from the perspective of an HMO might nd that intensive therapy for diabetes, for which most benets are far in the future, is not cost-effective from a business perspective, even if it is cost-effective from a societal perspective. In such a case, knowing that the business case for this valuable intervention is not strong might help target attention to developing quality indicators to ensure that plans are making good efforts to encourage intensive therapy for the appropriate patients. Cost-effectiveness analysis can also sometimes be used to assess when it would be valuable to do more research on a technology in order to better characterize how it should be used. Evidence-Based Medicine and Physician Practice Patterns To the extent that variation in practice patterns is an important contributor to higher health care costs, it becomes important to control practice vari-

ations by improving alignment of practice patterns using evidence on the costs and benets of care. The scientic literature provides important data for such evidence-based practice. Nevertheless, it is well established that there are large gaps between the time evidence becomes available and the time it is incorporated into practice. As a result, a great deal of effort has gone into approaches that may be used to change physician behavior and to create systems-level changes that can support the better use of evidence in clinical care. Health information systems provide a variety of tools, and their increasing use has already begun to show promise in addressing practice variations to improve meaningfully both the cost and effectiveness of care. Costs and the Clinician Economic concerns arise in clinical care on a daily basis. They range from patientoriented concerns (such as outof-pocket costs or insurance purchase decisions) to system-oriented concerns (such as hospital or health plan management) to physicianoriented concerns (practice management and personal earnings). To be fully effective, physicians need to develop and maintain an understanding of these economic considerations in the practice of medicine and to reect them in their professional behavior.


FURTHER READINGSBODENHEIMER T: High and rising health care costs. Part 3: The role of health care providers. Ann Intern Med 142(12):996, 2005 CUTLER DM, MCCLELLAN M: Is technological change in medicine worth it? Health Affairs 20(5):11, 2001 FISHER ES et al: The implications of regional variations in medicare spending. Part 1: The content, quality, and accessibility of care. Ann Intern Med 138(4):273, 2003 MELTZER D et al: Does competition under Medicare Prospective Payment selectively reduce expenditures on high-cost patients? RAND J Econ 33(3):447, 2002 MURPHY KM, TOPEL RH: Measuring the Gains from Medical Research: An Economic Approach. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003 NEWHOUSE JP: Consumer-directed health plans and the RAND health insurance experiment. Health Affairs 23(6):107, 2004 Primer on cost-effectiveness analysis. Effect Clin Pract September/October, 253255, 2000


Ethnic e3 Racial andCare Disparities in HealthJoseph R. Betancourt, David BlumenthalOver the course of its history, the United States has experienced dramatic improvements in overall health and life expectancy due largely to initiatives in public health, health promotion, disease prevention, and chronic care management. Our ability to prevent, detect, and treat diseases in their early stages has allowed us to target and reduce morbidity and mortality. Despite interventions that have improved the overall health of the majority of Americans, racial and ethnic minorities (Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, Native Americans/Alaska Natives, Asian/Pacic Islanders) have beneted less from these advances and suffer poorer health outcomes than whites from many major diseases (e.g., cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes) in the United States. Research has highlighted that minorities may receive lower quality of care than whites in the health care setting, even when confounders such as stage of presentation and comorbidities are controlled for and they have the same level of health insurance. These differences in quality are called racial and ethnic disparities in health care. This chapter will provide an overview of racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, identify root causes, and provide key recommendations to address them at both the health system and clinical level. NATURE AND EXTENT OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISPARITIES IN HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE Minority Americans have poorer health outcomes (compared with whites) from preventable and treatable conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, cancer, and HIV/AIDS, among others (Fig. e3-1). Multiple factors contribute to these racial and ethnic disparities in health. First and foremost, there is little doubt that social determinantssuch as lower levels of education, overall lower socioeconomic status, inadequate and unsafe housing, racism, and living in close proximity to environmental hazardsdisproportionately impact minority populations and thus contribute to poorer health outcomes. For example, three of the ve largest landlls in the country are found in African-American and Latino communities; these environmental hazards have contributed to some of the highest rates of pediatric asthma among these populations. Second, lack of access to care also takes a signicant toll, as uninsured individuals are less likely to have a regular source of care, are more likely to report delaying seeking care, and are more likely to report that they have not received needed carePercent

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Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care

20

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FIGURE e3-2 Recommended hospital care received by Medicare patients with pneumonia, by race/ethnicity, 20022003. Reference population is Medicare beneficiaries with pneumonia who are hospitalized. Composite is calculated by averaging the percentage of the population that received each of the five incorporated components of care. NA/AN, Native American or Alaska Native. (Adapted from Agency for Health Care Research and Quality: The 2005 National Health Care Disparities Report.) all resulting in avoidable hospitalizations, emergency hospital care, and adverse health outcomes. In addition to the existence of racial and ethnic disparities in health, there are racial/ethnic disparities in the quality of care for those with access to the health care system. For instance, disparities have been found in the treatment of pneumonia (Fig. e3-2) and congestive heart failure (African Americans receiving less optimal care than whites when hospitalized for these conditions) and referral to renal transplantation (African Americans with end-stage renal disease being referred less often to the transplant list than whites) (Fig. e3-3). Disparities have also been found in the utilization of cardiac diagnostic and therapeutic procedures (African Americans being referred less than whites for cardiac catheterization and bypass grafting), prescription of analgesia for pain control (African Americans and Latinos receiving less pain medication than whites for long bone fractures and cancer), and surgical treatment of lung cancer (African Americans re-

White Black Percentage of patients American Indian or Alaska Native Asian or Pacific Islander 200 150 100 50 0 Diseases of heart Cerebrovascular diseases Malignant neoplasms Diabetes mellitus Hispanic 100 80 60 40 20 0 Referred for evaluation59.6 80.3 57.9 40.3 82.2 68.9

Black women White women Black men White men67.9

40.6

Placed on waiting list or received transplant

FIGURE e3-1 Age-adjusted death rates for selected causes by race and Hispanic origin, 2000. (From Institute of Medicine: Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 2002.)

FIGURE e3-3 Referral for evaluation at a transplantation center or placement on a waiting list or receipt of a renal transplantation within 18 months after the start of dialysis among patients who wanted a transplant, according to race and sex. Reference population is 239 black women, 280 white women, 271 black men, and 271 white men. Racial differences were statistically significant among the women and the men (p 100) and are somewhat oval in shape. Some morphologists call these cells macroovalocytes.

FIGURE e11-9 Rouleaux formation. Small lymphocyte in center of field. These red cells align themselves in stacks and are related to increased serum protein levels.

FIGURE e11-7 Hypersegmented neutrophils. Hypersegmented neutrophils (multilobed polymorphonuclear leukocytes) are larger than normal neutrophils with five or more segmented nuclear lobes. They are commonly seen with folic acid or vitamin B12 deficiency.

FIGURE e11-10 Red cell agglutination. Small lymphocyte and segmented neutrophil upper left center. Note irregular collections of aggregated red cells.

FIGURE e11-8 Spherocytosis. Note small hyperchromatic cells without the usual clear area in the center.

FIGURE e11-11 Fragmented red cells. Heart valve hemolysis.


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PART 2Cardinal Manifestations and Presentation of Diseases

FIGURE e11-12 Sickle cells. Homozygous sickle cell disease. A nucleated red cell and neutrophil are also in the field.

FIGURE e11-15 Stomatocytosis. Red cells characterized by a wide transverse slit or stoma. This is often seen as an artifact in a dehydrated blood smear. These cells can be seen in hemolytic anemias and in conditions in which the red cell is overhydrated or dehydrated.

FIGURE e11-13 Target cells. Target cells are recognized by the bullseye appearance of the cell. Small numbers of target cells are seen with liver disease and thalassemia. Larger numbers are typical of hemoglobin C disease. FIGURE e11-16 Acanthocytosis. Spiculated red cells are of two types: acanthocytes are contracted dense cells with irregular membrane projections that vary in length and width; echinocytes have small, uniform, and evenly spaced membrane projections. Acanthocytes are present in severe liver disease, in patients with abetalipoproteinemia, and in rare patients with McLeod blood group. Echinocytes are found in patients with severe uremia, in glycolytic red cell enzyme defects, and in microangiopathic hemolytic anemia.

FIGURE e11-14 Elliptocytosis. Small lymphocyte in center of field. Elliptical shape of red cells related to weakened membrane structure, usually due to mutations in spectrin.

FIGURE e11-17 Howell-Jolly bodies. Howell-Jolly bodies are tiny nuclear remnants that are normally removed by the spleen. They appear in the blood after splenectomy (defect in removal) and with maturation/dysplastic disorders (excess production).Copyright 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER e11 Atlas of Hematology and Analysis of Peripheral Blood Smears

FIGURE e11-18 Teardrop cells and nucleated red blood cells characteristic of myelofibrosis. A teardrop-shaped red blood cell (left panel ) and a nucleated red blood cell (right panel ) as typically seen with myelofibrosis and extramedullary hematopoiesis.

FIGURE e11-21 Stippled red cell in lead poisoning. Mild hypochromia. Coarsely stippled red cell.

FIGURE e11-19 Myelofibrosis of the bone marrow. Total replacement of marrow precursors and fat cells by a dense infiltrate of reticulin fibers and collagen (H&E stain).

FIGURE e11-22 Heinz bodies. Blood mixed with hypotonic solution of crystal violet. The stained material is precipitates of denatured hemoglobin within cells.

FIGURE e11-23 Giant platelets. Giant platelets, together with a marked increase in the platelet count, are seen in myeloproliferative disorders, especially primary thrombocythemia. FIGURE e11-20 Reticulin stain of marrow myelofibrosis. Silver stain of a myelofibrotic marrow showing an increase in reticulin fibers (black-staining threads).


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FIGURE e11-24 Normal granulocytes. The normal granulocyte has a segmented nucleus with heavy, clumped chromatin; fine neutrophilic granules are dispersed throughout the cytoplasm.


FIGURE e11-27 Normal basophil. The film was prepared from the buffy coat of the blood from a normal donor. L, lymphocyte; B, basophil.

FIGURE e11-28 Pelger-Het anomaly. In this benign disorder, the majority of granulocytes are bilobed. The nucleus frequently has a spectacle-like, or pince-nez configuration. FIGURE e11-25 Normal monocytes. The film was prepared from the buffy coat of the blood from a normal donor. L, lymphocyte; M monocyte; N, neutrophil.

FIGURE e11-29 Dhle body. Neutrophil band with Dhle body. The neutrophil with a sausage-shaped nucleus in the center of the field is a band form. Dhle bodies are discrete, blue-staining nongranular areas found in the periphery of the cytoplasm of the neutrophil in infections and other toxic states. They represent aggregates of rough endoplasmic reticulum.

FIGURE e11-26 Normal eosinophils. The film was prepared from the buffy coat of the blood from a normal donor. N, neutrophil; E, eosinophil.

FIGURE e11-30 Chdiak-Higashi disease. Note giant granules in neutrophil.Copyright 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.

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FIGURE e11-31 Normal bone marrow. Low-power view of normal adult marrow (H&E stain), showing a mix of fat cells (clear areas) and hematopoietic cells. The percentage of the space that is hematopoietic cells is referred to as marrow cellularity. In adults, normal marrow cellularity is 3540%. If demands for increased marrow production occur, cellularity may increase to meet the demand. As we age, the marrow cellularity decreases and the marrow fat increases. Patients >70 years may have a 2030% marrow cellularity.

FIGURE e11-34 Lymphoma in the bone marrow. Nodular (follicular) lymphoma infiltrate in a marrow biopsy specimen. Note the characteristic paratrabecular location of the lymphoma cells.

FIGURE e11-32 Aplastic anemia bone marrow. Normal hematopoietic precursor cells are virtually absent, leaving behind fat cells, reticuloendothelial cells, and the underlying sinusoidal structure.

FIGURE e11-35 Erythroid hyperplasia of the marrow. Marrow aspirate specimen with a myeloid/erythroid ratio (M/E ratio) of 1:12, typical for a patient with a hemolytic anemia or recovering from blood loss.

FIGURE e11-33 Metastatic cancer in the bone marrow. Marrow biopsy specimen infiltrated with metastatic breast cancer and reactive fibrosis (H&E stain).

FIGURE e11-36 Myeloid hyperplasia of the marrow. Marrow aspirate specimen showing a myeloid/erythroid ratio of 3:1, suggesting either a loss of red blood cell precursors or an expansion of myeloid elements.


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FIGURE e11-37 Megaloblastic erythropoiesis. High-power view of megaloblastic red blood cell precursors from a patient with a macrocytic anemia. Maturation is delayed with late normoblasts showing a more immature appearing nucleus with a lattice-like pattern with normal cytoplasmic maturation.

FIGURE e11-40 Acute myeloid leukemia. Leukemic myeloblast with an Auer rod. Note two to four large, prominent nucleoli in each cell.

FIGURE e11-41 Acute promyelocytic leukemia. Note prominent cytoplasmic granules in the leukemia cells. FIGURE e11-38 Prussian blue staining of marrow iron stores. Iron stores can be graded on a scale of 0 to 4+. A: a marrow with excess iron stores (>4+); B: normal stores (23+); C: minimal stores (1+); and D: absent iron stores (0).

FIGURE e11-42 Acute erythroleukemia. Note giant dysmorphic erythroblasts, two are binucleate and one is multinucleate.

FIGURE e11-39 Ringed sideroblast. An orthochromatic normoblast with a collar of blue granules (mitochondria encrusted with iron) surrounding the nucleus.


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FIGURE e11-43 Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

FIGURE e11-46 Chronic lymphoid leukemia in the peripheral blood.

FIGURE e11-44 Burkitts leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. FIGURE e11-47 Szarys syndrome. Lymphocytes with frequently convoluted nuclei (Szary cells) in a patient with advanced mycosis fungoides.

FIGURE e11-48 Adult T cell leukemia. Peripheral blood smear showing leukemia cells with typical flower-shaped nucleus.

FIGURE e11-45 Chronic myeloid leukemia in the peripheral blood.

FIGURE e11-49 Follicular lymphoma in a lymph node. The normal nodal architecture is effaced by nodular expansions of tumor cells. Nodules vary in size and contain predominantly small lymphocytes with cleaved nuclei along with variable numbers of larger cells with vesicular chromatin and prominent nucleoli.Copyright 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.

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FIGURE e11-50 Diffuse large B cell lymphoma in a lymph node. The neoplastic cells are heterogeneous but predominantly large cells with vesicular chromatin and prominent nucleoli.

FIGURE e11-53 Hodgkins disease. A Reed-Sternberg cell is present near the center of the field; a large cell with a bilobed nucleus and prominent nucleoli giving an owls eyes appearance. The majority of the cells are normal lymphocytes, neutrophils, and eosinophils that form a pleiomorphic cellular infiltrate.

PART 2Cardinal Manifestations and Presentation of DiseasesFIGURE e11-51 Burkitts lymphoma in a lymph node. Burkitts lymphoma with starry-sky appearance. The lighter areas are macrophages attempting to clear dead cells. FIGURE e11-52 Erythrophagocytosis accompanying aggressive lymphoma. The central macrophage is ingesting red cells, neutrophils, and platelets. (Courtesy of Dr. Kiyomi Tsukimori, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.)

FIGURE e11-54 Lacunar cell; Reed-Sternberg cell variant in nodular sclerosing Hodgkins disease. High-power view of single mononuclear lacunar cell with retracted cytoplasm in a patient with nodular sclerosing Hodgkins disease.

FIGURE e11-55 Normal plasma cell.


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FIGURE e11-56 Multiple myeloma. FIGURE e11-57 Color serum in hemoglobinemia. The distinctive red coloration of plasma (hemoglobinemia) in a spun blood sample in a patient with intravascular hemolysis.


e12

ThymomaDan L. Longo

TABLE e12-1 MASAOKA STAGING SYSTEM FOR THYMOMAS StageI II IIA IIB III IIIA IIIB IV IVA IVB Pleural or pericardial dissemination Lymphatic or hematogenous metastases Macroscopic invasion into neighboring organs, pericardium, or pleura but not the great vessels Macroscopic invasion into neighboring organs that includes great vessels Microscopic invasion outside of the capsule Macroscopic invasion into surrounding fat or grossly adherent to pleura or pericardium

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Diagnostic CriteriaMacroscopically and microscopically completely encapsulated; no invasion through capsule

The thymus is derived from the third and fourth pharyngeal pouches and is located in the anterior mediastinum. The thymus is composed of epithelial and stromal cells derived from the pharyngeal pouch and lymphoid precursors derived from mesodermal cells. It is the site to which bone marrow precursors that are committed to differentiate into T cells migrate to complete their differentiation. Like many organs, it is organized into functional regionsin this case, the cortex and the medulla. The cortex of the thymus contains ~85% of the lymphoid cells and the medulla ~15%. It appears that the primitive bone marrow progenitors enter the thymus at the corticomedullary junction and migrate rst through the cortex toward the periphery of the gland and then toward the medulla as they mature. Medullary thymocytes have a phenotype that cannot readily be distinguished from mature peripheral blood and lymph node T cells. Several things can go wrong with the thymus, but thymic abnormalities are very rare. If the thymus does not develop properly, serious deciencies in T cell development ensue and severe immunodeciency is seen (e.g., DiGeorge syndrome, Chap. 310). If a lymphoid cell within the thymus becomes neoplastic, the disease that develops is a lymphoma. The majority of lymphoid tumors that develop in the thymus are derived from the precursor T cells, and the tumor is a precursor T cell lymphoblastic lymphoma (Chap. 105). Rare B cells exist in the thymus, and when these become neoplastic, the tumor is a mediastinal (thymic) B cell lymphoma (Chap. 105). Germ cell tumors and carcinoid tumors may occasionally arise in the thymus. If the epithelial cells of the thymus become neoplastic, the tumor that develops is a thymoma. CLINICAL PRESENTATION AND DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS Thymoma is the most common cause of an anterior mediastinal mass in adults, accounting for ~40% of all mediastinal masses. The other major causes of anterior mediastinal mass are lymphomas, germ cell tumors, and substernal thyroid tumors. Carcinoid tumors, lipomas, and thymic cysts may also produce radiographic masses. Thymomas are most common in the fth and sixth decades, are uncommon in children, and are distributed evenly between men and women. About 4050% of patients are asymptomatic; masses are detected incidentally on routine chest radiographs. When symptomatic, patients may have cough, chest pain, dyspnea, fever, wheezing, fatigue, weight loss, night sweats, or anorexia. Occasionally, thymomas may obstruct the superior vena cava. About 40% of patients with thymoma have another systemic autoimmune illness related to the thymoma. About 30% of patients with thymoma have myasthenia gravis, 58% have pure red cell aplasia, and ~5% have hypogammaglobulinemia. Among patients with myasthenia gravis, ~1015% have a thymoma. Thymoma more rarely may be associated with polymyositis, systemic lupus erythematosus, thyroiditis, Sjgrens syndrome, ulcerative colitis, pernicious anemia, Addisons disease, scleroderma, and panhypopituitarism. In one series, 70% of patients with thymoma were found to have another systemic illness (Souadjian et al, 1974). DIAGNOSIS AND STAGING Once a mediastinal mass is detected, a surgical procedure is required for denitive diagnosis. An initial mediastinoscopy or limited thoracotomy can be undertaken to get sufcient tissue to make an accurate diagnosis. Fine-needle aspiration is poor at distinguishing between lymphomas and thymomas but is more reliable in diagnosing germ cell tumors and metastatic carcinoma. Thymomas and lymphomas require sufcient tissue to examine the tumor architecture to assure an accurate diagnosis and obtain prognostic information. Once a diagnosis of thymoma is dened, subsequent staging generally occurs at surgery. However, chest CT scans can assess local invasiveness in some instances. MRI has a dened role in the staging of posterior mediastinal tumors, but it is not yet clear that it adds impor-

CHAPTER e12 Thymoma

Stage Distribution, %I II III IV 65 25 5 5

5-Year Survival, %95100 70100 5070 1150

10-Year Survival, %86100 5100 4760 011

Source: From A Masaoka et al: Cancer 48:2485, 1981.

tant information to the CT scan in anterior mediastinal tumors. Somatostatin receptor imaging with indium-labeled somatostatin analogues may be of value (Lin et al, 1999). If invasion is not distinguished by noninvasive testing, an effort to resect the entire tumor should be undertaken. If invasion is present, neoadjuvant chemotherapy may be warranted before surgery (see Treatment, below). Some 90% of thymomas are in the anterior mediastinum, but some may be in other mediastinal sites or even the neck, based on aberrant migration of the developing thymic enlage. The staging system for thymoma was developed by Masaoka and colleagues (Table e12-1). It is an anatomic system in which the stage is increased based on the degree of invasiveness. The 5-year survival of patients in the various stages is as follows: stage I, 96%; stage II, 86%; stage III, 69%; stage IV, 50%. The French Study Group on Thymic Tumors (GETT; Cowen et al, 1998) has proposed modications to the Masaoka scheme based upon the degree of surgical removal because the extent of surgery has been noted to be a prognostic indicator. In their system, stage I tumors are divided into A and B based on whether the surgeon suspects adhesions to adjacent structures; stage III tumors are divided into A and B based upon whether disease was subtotally resected or only biopsied. The concurrence between the two systems is high. PATHOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY Thymomas are epithelial tumors and all of them have malignant potential. It is not worthwhile to try to divide them into benign and malignant forms; the key prognostic feature is whether they are noninvasive or invasive. About 65% of thymomas are encapsulated and noninvasive and about 35% are invasive. They may have a variable percentage of lymphocytes within the tumor, but genetic studies suggest that the lymphocytes are benign polyclonal cells. The epithelial component of the tumor may consist primarily of round or oval cells derived mainly from the cortex or spindle-shaped cells derived mainly from the medulla or combinations thereof (Table e12-2). Cytologic features are not reliable predictors of biological behavior. About 90% of A, AB, and B1 tumors are localized. A very small number of patients have aggressive histology features characteristic of carcinomas. Thymic carcinomas are invasive and carry a poor prognosis. The genetic lesions in thymomas are not well characterized. Some data suggest that Epstein-Barr virus may be associated with thymomas (Dimery et al, 1988). Some tumors overexpress the p21 ras gene product. However, molecular pathogenesis remains undened. A thymoma susceptibility locus has been dened on rat chromosome 7, but the re-

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