Epidemiology and health services

This is a case-oriented text on the application of epidemiologic methods to health services research. It addresses the needs of a broad spectrum of health professionals and will help health service administrators, managers and other professionals design, conduct and evaluate research on the delivery of health services, giving a wider perspective on all applications of the discipline. Synopsis: What is the relevance of epidemiology to decision-making in health services? If our ability to launch large-scale experimental studies of health services is limited, what are some alternative approaches to study design? How can we best make use of routinely collected data from health information systems? How can we best synthesize information to make more reasonable inferences? These are some of the questions that Epidemiology and Health Services tries to answer. The book starts with three chapters on strategies for problem investigation, problem solving, and program development and evaluation. These are followed by nine chapters that give a theoretical overview of specific methods and then present case studies. The cases are based on important investigations of health services and are followed by questions and discussions that guide readers through the most salient issues of these studies. This is a book that addresses the needs of a broad spectrum of health professionals. It will help health service administrators, managers and other professional design and conduct evaluative and intervention research on the delivery of health services. And it will give epidemiology and public health students a wider perspective on applications of the discipline. (From the editor' s abstract)