Identifying the medical treatment guidelines that determine the appropriateness of treatment for California workers1 compensation recipients. Provides an evaluation of medical guidelines that might be used to determine the appropriateness of treatment for work-related injuries in California. Of 72 guideline sets that were identified and screened, five comprehensive sets were found to satisfy the legislative requirements and state preferences. Based on results of a comparative evaluation of the technical quality and clinical content of the five guideline sets, recommendations are given for actions the state might take in the short term, intermediate term, and longer term.

Considers potential efforts by the U.S. Department of Defense to assess the performance of military treatment facilities (MTFs) in cost-effectively managing health care. The authors first provide an overview of performance assessment in the nonmilitary health care sector; they then analyze the use of average MTF utilization and costs as performance measures, focusing on how MTF size and catastrophic cases affect these metrics.

This book examines various approaches, methodologies, and issues related to evaluation of the impact of health programs in developing countries and ways to make program evaluation more rigorous. Health interventions that are effective in developed countries may not be as effective in developing countries given the differing social, economic, cultural, and infrastructure factors that may affect a program's implementation and outcomes. This monograph is intended to promote an understanding of why program evaluation is a critical component of any health intervention and to stimulate discussion on ways to make evaluation of health interventions in developing countries more rigorous.