They give examples of potential breast health care outcome measures, including the use of charts and tumor registries to track stages of cancer over time and rate of true-positive breast biopsies for screening and diagnosis indicators. They define criteria for measures of the quality of breast cancer care. Meenan, R.T., O'Keefe-Rosetti, M.C., Hornbrook, M.C., and others. The sensitivity and specificity of forecasting high-cost users of medical care. Such models can act as preliminary screens for plans that can refine model forecasts with detailed surveys, suggest the authors.
All models forecast the highest cost cases relatively well.
The authors conclude that such models can inform care management decisions by efficiently screening managed care populations for high expense-risk. November 1999, No. 231.