Surveillance of physicians' prescribing patterns and the accumulation and sale of these data for pharmaceutical marketing are currently the subjects of legislation in several states and action by state and national medical associations. Contrary to common perception, the growth of the health care information organization industry has not been limited to the past decade but has been building slowly over the past 50 years, beginning in the 1940s when growth in the prescription drug market fueled industry interest in understanding and influencing prescribing patterns. The development of this surveillance system was not simply imposed on the medical profession by the pharmaceutical industry but was developed through the interactions of pharmaceutical salesmen, pharmaceutical marketers, academic researchers, individual physicians, and physician organizations. Examination of the role of physicians and physician organizations in the development of prescriber profiling is directly relevant to the contemporary policy debate surrounding this issue.

Recent recommendations to screen for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) in high-risk populations and the rapidly increasing use of endovascular repair have led to increased interest in evaluating the effectiveness of treatment options for patients with AAA.

Longer-term mortality benefit and cost-effectiveness for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening are uncertain.

Few studies have tested the effects of a depression intervention on the risk for death associated with depression.

Adalimumab, a fully human tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonist, is an effective treatment for patients with Crohn disease who are naive to the chimeric TNF antagonist, infliximab. No anti-TNF agent has been evaluated prospectively in patients with Crohn disease who had responded to another anti-TNF agent and then lost that response or were intolerant of the agent.

Elevated total homocysteine levels are associated with a higher risk for venous thromboembolism. Whether decreasing homocysteine levels with vitamin therapy reduces the risk for venous thromboembolism is not known.

As the financial burden of cost sharing continues to rise, patients increasingly avoid necessary care, thereby contributing to the high morbidity and mortality of the U.S. population compared with that of other developed countries. The rationale for cost sharing is often based on the moral hazard argument, which states that individuals may overuse care if they do not share in its costs. We evaluate this argument in detail, using it to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate settings for cost sharing. Cost sharing may be appropriate when health services are of low value (low ratio of benefits to costs), whereas it is inappropriate when health services are of high value (high ratio of benefits to costs). In practice, cost sharing is rarely linked to value, and therefore much of the cost sharing that currently occurs is inappropriate and harmful. Cost-effectiveness analysis is an objective method to estimate the value of health services and may be a way to systematically evaluate whether cost-sharing policies are appropriate. Systematic efforts to discourage inappropriate cost sharing may improve public health.

Quality improvement (QI) activities can improve health care but must be conducted ethically. The Hastings Center convened leaders and scholars to address ethical requirements for QI and their relationship to regulations protecting human subjects of research. The group defined QI as systematic, data-guided activities designed to bring about immediate improvements in health care delivery in particular settings and concluded that QI is an intrinsic part of normal health care operations. Both clinicians and patients have an ethical responsibility to participate in QI, provided that it complies with specified ethical requirements. Most QI activities are not human subjects research and should not undergo review by an institutional review board; rather, appropriately calibrated supervision of QI activities should be part of professional supervision of clinical practice. The group formulated a framework that would use key characteristics of a project and its context to categorize it as QI, human subjects research, or both, with the potential of a customized institutional review board process for the overlap category. The group recommended a period of innovation and evaluation to refine the framework for ethical conduct of QI and to integrate that framework into clinical practice.

The risks and benefits of mammography screening among women 40 to 49 years of age remain an important issue for clinical practice.

Breast cancer is one of the most common causes of death for women in their 40s in the United States. Individualized risk assessment plays an important role when making decisions about screening mammography, especially for women 49 years of age or younger. The purpose of this guideline is to present the available evidence for screening mammography in women 40 to 49 years of age and to increase clinicians' understanding of the benefits and risks of screening mammography.

Benign reductions in neutrophil counts may be more common at certain ages and in certain ethnic groups and may be affected by sex and smoking status.