Our Publications

An Analysis of the Significant Variation in Psychostimulant Use Across the U.S.

Posted on By nicholas-c-petris-center

By Farasat Bokhari, Rick Mayes, and Richard M. Scheffler | Published May 2004 in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety | Link to Full Article

Psychostimulants (methylphenidate and ampheta-mines) are primarily used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder in children, making up more than 50% of all child psychiatric diagnoses. This article seeks to provide a national profile of the area variation in per-capita psychostimulant consumption in the U.S. We separated 3030 U.S. counties into two categories of ‘low’ and ‘high’ per-capita use of attention deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADHD) drugs (based on data from the Drug Enforcement Administration), and then analyzed them on the basis of their socio-demographic, economic, educational and medical characteristics. We found significant differences and similarities in the profile of counties in the U.S. that are above and below the national median rate of per-capita psychostimulant use (defined as g/per 100K population). Compared to counties below the median level, counties above the median level have: significantly greater population, higher per-capita income, lower unemployment rates, greater HMO penetration, more physicians per capita, a higher ratio of young-to-old physicians and a slightly higher students-to-teacher ratio. Our analysis of the DEA’s ARCOS data shows that most of the significant variables correlated with ‘higher’per-capita use of ADHD drugs serve as a proxy for county affluence.

California’s Closed Hospitals, 1995-2000

Posted on By nicholas-c-petris-center

By the Nicholas C. Petris Center | Published in April 2001 by the Petris Center | Link to Full Report

In October 2000, The Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare, a research organization at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, took on the job of creating a taxonomical list of all general acute care hospitals in California that closed between 1995 and 2000. Thus, we have put together the only effort that we know of to collect and synthesize standardized information about the California hospitals that closed in the second half of the 1990s. For the first time, we can now document and describe the 23 general acute care (GAC) hospitals that closed, 11 of which took place at for-profit facilities. The vast majority took place in urban areas, and they were most often in southern California. More than half of the closed hospitals had fewer than 100 licensed beds. Ten of the closed hospitals had changed ownership within three years prior to their closure. All the closed hospitals claimed, and demonstrated, financial distress prior to closing.