The New England journal of medicine
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The glomerular filtration rate (GFR) assesses the function of all nephrons, and the single-nephron GFR assesses the function of individual nephrons. How the single-nephron GFR relates to demographic and clinical characteristics and kidney-biopsy findings in humans is unknown. ⋯ Among healthy adult kidney donors, the single-nephron GFR was fairly constant with regard to age, sex, and height (if ≤190 cm). A higher single-nephron GFR was associated with certain risk factors for chronic kidney disease and certain kidney-biopsy findings. (Funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.).
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Starting in fiscal year 2013, the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program introduced quality performance-based adjustments of up to 1% to Medicare reimbursements for acute care hospitals. ⋯ In our study, HVBP was not associated with improvements in measures of clinical process or patient experience and was not associated with significant reductions in two of three mortality measures. (Funded by the National Institute on Aging.).