Hysteroscopic resection of cervical nerve sheath tumor.

Isolated nerve sheath tumors of the uterine cervix are very rare entities. This is especially true for benign nerve sheath tumors. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first case of a benign nerve sheath tumor resected hysteroscopically. Our patient is a 69 year-old white female with a history of post menopausal bleeding. Initial workup included an endometrial biopsy and an ultrasound. A 4 cm cervical mass was identified on that study. Further characterization of the mass was obtained with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Gynecologic-Oncology consultation was obtained, and the opinion was that this was a cervical myoma. The patient continued to have bleeding and was taken to the operating room for a hysteroscopy and dilatation and curettage. At surgery, a large cervical mass was resected hysteroscopically. Final pathology report showed this to be a benign nerve sheath tumor.

Managing behavioral health care: an employer's perspective.

Employee life cycle events and behavioral health disorders impact productivity and well-being. Employers use wellness initiatives and employee assistance or work-family programs to help manage those factors that can distract employees from performing optimally. Employer-sponsored health benefits are designed to protect employees from the catastrophic costs of illness. However, today's plan designers struggle with employee and employer affordability that does not compromise quality or effectiveness. In 1990, Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Mass., shifted its strategy from an indemnity model to a managed care model that uses health maintenance organizations. Comprehensive standards are used to ensure the delivery of quality behavioral health care that is cost effective, is delivered at the clinically appropriate levels, and uses a broad continuum of treatment approaches with measurable outcomes.

Consumer information and biased selection in the demand for coverage supplementing Medicare.

This study examines how the relationship between health insurance knowledge and the health status of health insurance consumers influences their decisions to purchase insurance coverage. Data from the federal Medicare health insurance program for the elderly in the United States are used. The basic Medicare program provides a limited amount of coverage for health care services obtained from any provider in the private fee-for-service (FFS) market. Beneficiaries of this program may choose to supplement the basic coverage which they receive by two mechanisms: either they may purchase private insurance designed to fill some of the gaps left by the federal program ('Medigap' policies), thereby remaining in the FFS market and preserving their choice of provider, or they may enroll in health maintenance organizations (HMOs), thereby leaving the FFS market and agreeing to use only those providers affiliated with the HMO, and in return receiving broader coverage at little additional out-of-pocket cost. The study was made possible by a unique data set which combines measures of beneficiary knowledge of Medicare coverage with measures of perceived health status, socio-economic characteristics, and insurance coverage choices for a sample of Medicare beneficiaries who participated in an educational workshop about their insurance coverage options. These data were used to estimate a multinomial logistic model of the determinants of insurance choices, where the options included the two listed above and a basic Medicare option. The study explicitly recognizes the interaction between insurance information and health status in health plan choice. These results show that knowledge of coverage does have a differential impact on the decision to purchase health insurance depending on health status. With a high level of knowledge, sicker beneficiaries are less likely to have basic Medicare alone, compared with HMOs or Medigap policies, while healthier beneficiaries are less likely to be enrolled in HMOs, compared with Medigap policies. This finding has important implications for the use of health status measures to adjust capitated payment formulas when knowledgable consumers have the option to enroll in HMOs or remain in the FFS environment. In the absence of health status adjusters for the HMO capitation payments, high levels of coverage knowledge may exacerbate inherent selection bias among these coverage options by healthier and sicker consumers of health insurance.

Helping Medicare beneficiaries choose health insurance: the illness episode approach.

Lacking objective, comprehensible information about health care coverage options, Medicare beneficiaries rarely understand the consequences of alternative purchasing decisions. We describe the Illness Episode Approach, a method providing information on Medicare itself, Medigap policies, and HMOs. The method presents calculations of seniors' out-of-pocket costs under different insurance options for 13 common illnesses.

Illness-episode approach: costs and benefits of medigap insurance.

Over two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have private supplementary coverage, but few know enough about Medicare, their own supplements, or available alternatives to make intelligent comparisons and informed purchasing decisions. The illness-episode approach, a new way to provide insurance information to Medicare beneficiaries, calculates out-of-pocket costs likely to be faced by beneficiaries experiencing 13 illnesses, under Medicare alone and under different medigap policies. Applying the approach to six policies marketed in Los Angeles in 1986 revealed that plans varied widely in their ability to reduce financial vulnerability; many still leave the elderly with substantial out-of-pocket costs.

Designing health insurance information for the Medicare beneficiary: a policy synthesis.

Can Medicare beneficiaries make rational and informed decisions about their coverage under the Medicare program? Recent policy developments in the Medicare program have been based on the theory of competition in medical care. One of the key assumptions of the competitive model is the free flow of adequate information, enabling the consumer to make an informed choice from among the various sellers of a particular product. Options for Medicare beneficiaries in supplementing their basic Medicare coverage include the purchase of private supplementary insurance policies or enrollment in a Medicare HMO. These consumers, in a complex health insurance market, have only limited information available to them because many health plans do not make adequate comparable product information available. Moreover, since the introduction of the Medicare HMO option, the long-range plan for management of the Medicare budget has become based on the large-scale voluntary enrollment of beneficiaries into capitated health plans. The policy instrument that has been used to improve beneficiary decisions on how to supplement Medicare coverage is the informational or educational program. This synthesis presents findings regarding the relative effectiveness of different types of health insurance information programs for the Medicare beneficiary in an effort to promote practical use of the most effective types of information.

Status epilepticus during labor. A case report.

Epileptic seizures during labor are seen rarely. A patient in labor had a 70-minute tonic-clonic convulsion. Maternal acid-base status and oxygenation remained normal. Fetal monitoring showed no evidence of distress. This case suggests that fetal bradycardia during maternal seizures is due to hypoxia and acidosis, not to other factors.

Immunoglobulin therapy for autoimmune thrombocytopenia purpura during pregnancy. A report of two cases.

High-dose, intravenous immunoglobulin therapy may be effective in elevating low platelet counts in nonpregnant patients with autoimmune thrombocytopenia purpura (ATP). We used immunoglobulin successfully on two pregnant women with ATP who had been refractory to high-dose corticosteroid therapy. The 5-day infusions were started at 12 and 29 weeks' gestation, and the subsequent uncomplicated vaginal deliveries occurred after the shortest reported interval (8 days) and longest (28 weeks) following a single immunoglobulin infusion. A splenectomy was avoided, and no adverse maternal or neonatal effects were apparent.

Myositis ossificans progressiva and pregnancy. A therapeutic dilemma.

Myositis ossificans progressiva is a rare but progressively debilitating autosomal dominant disease characterized by extraskeletal ossification involving muscle connective tissue. This report is the first on pregnancy and induced abortion in a patient with myositis ossificans progressiva. Intraoperative sector scanning ultrasound was of limited benefit in evacuation of the uterine cavity. Conservative management of an incomplete termination resulted in no adverse sequelae.