RAND advances understanding of health and health behaviors and examines how the organization and financing of care affect costs, quality, and access. RAND's body of research—conducted primarily through the RAND Health division—includes innovative studies of health insurance, health care reform, health information technology, and women's health, as well as topical concerns such as obesity, complementary and alternative medicine, and PTSD in veterans and survivors of catastrophe.
Probiotics are believed to improve health by maintaining a normal balance of microorganisms in the human intestines. Evidence shows that they can reduce the risk of developing diarrhea, which is a common side effect of taking antibiotics.
If consumer-directed health plans grow to account for half of all employer-sponsored insurance in the United States, health costs could drop by $57 billion annually—about 4 percent of all health care spending among the nonelderly.
Use of anesthesia providers to monitor sedation during screening colonoscopies and other outpatient gastroenterology procedures more than doubled from 2003 to 2009 in the United States, with most of the increase among low-risk patients who may not need this service.
Researchers from the RAND Corporation and other institutions have begun pilot-testing a web-based tool designed to help parents and adult caregivers determine whether to seek urgent medical attention for a sick child with flu-like symptoms.
As health care reform expands the use of "report cards" to grade health care providers, greater attention to reporting methods may be needed to assure the quality of such efforts.
Eliminating a key part of health care reform that requires all Americans to have health insurance would sharply lower the number of people gaining coverage, but would not dramatically increase the cost of buying policies through new insurance exchanges.
Rules that allow some small employers to avoid regulation under the federal Affordable Care Act are unlikely to have a major impact on the future cost of health insurance unless those rules are relaxed to allow more businesses to opt out.
The financial burden Americans face paying out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs has declined, although prescription costs remain a significant challenge for people with lower incomes and those with public insurance.
If prevention researchers build programs with developmentally relevant content, and provide this content in an engaging, confidential, and non-judgmental way, it can help middle school-aged children avoid alcohol.
Promoting immunizations as a part of routine office-based medical practice is needed to improve adult vaccination rates, a highly effective way to curb the spread of diseases across communities, prevent needless illness and deaths, and lower health care costs.
With the need for HIV services in developing countries rising and the availability of funding flat or declining, existing resources should be better leveraged to help provide life-saving services to more people in need.
A new online tool, called the "Unintended Consequences Guide," is available from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to help hospitals and other health care organizations anticipate, avoid, and address problems that can occur when adopting and using electronic health records.
The number of people aged 23 to 26—primarily women—who became registered nurses increased by 62 percent from 2002 to 2009, approaching numbers not seen since the mid-1980s. This trend should ease some of the concern about a looming nursing shortage in the United States.
Use of retail medical clinics located in pharmacies and other retail settings increased tenfold between 2007 and 2009. The determining factors in choosing one over a physician's office were found to be age, health status, income, and proximity to the clinic.
With the health care safety net in California under stress from the state's continuing financial crisis, jurisdictions across the state face unprecedented challenges caring for the health and social service needs of people released from state prisons.
Despite the recent drawdown in Iraq, the high operational tempo of the past decade that has included longer and more-frequent deployments has resulted in significant mental health problems among some service members. More than 200 programs are available to help treat psychological health and traumatic brain injury issues, but better coordination of those efforts is needed.
Under bundled payments, doctors, hospitals, and other providers share one fee for treating all aspects of a procedure such as a hip replacement or a chronic disease like diabetes. The approach should eliminate unnecessary care and improve quality, but putting it into practice is proving to be more difficult than anticipated.
Treating U.S. veterans with mental illness and substance use disorders is more expensive than caring for those with other medical conditions but the quality of mental health care offered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is as good as or better than that reported by privately insured, Medicare, or Medicaid populations.
Mexican citizens are living longer and overall have experienced an improvement in the quality of life compared to that of prior generations. However, the demographic transition in Mexico combined with the lack of formal sources of income in retirement place many older persons in a state of financial insecurity.
Mexican citizens are living longer and overall have experienced an improvement in the quality of life compared to that of prior generations. However, the demographic transition in Mexico combined with the lack of formal sources of income in retirement place many older persons in a state of financial insecurity.
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2012 RAND Corporation.