The distribution of the usual provider continuity index under Markov dependence

✍ Scribed by W.Y.Wendy Lou

• Book ID: 104301674
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 95 KB
• Volume: 54
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-7152
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-7152(01)00058-x

✦ Synopsis

In the health care sector, a sequence identifying which doctor=provider was seen by a particular patient over a number of visits can be viewed as a series of outcomes from multi-state trials. The usual provider continuity (UPC) index, deÿned as the fraction of patient visits to some speciÿed "usual" provider, is one of the most commonly used measures for quantifying continuity of care. In this note, we derive the exact distribution of UPC under the assumption of Markov dependence between visits, using the ÿnite Markov chain imbedding technique. Numerical examples are given to illustrate our main result.