CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne
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Household food insecurity, a measure of income-related problems of food access, is growing in Canada and is tightly linked to poorer health status. We examined the association between household food insecurity status and annual health care costs. ⋯ Household food insecurity was a robust predictor of health care utilization and costs incurred by working-age adults, independent of other social determinants of health. Policy interventions at the provincial or federal level designed to reduce household food insecurity could offset considerable public expenditures in health care.
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Physician scores on examinations decline with time after graduation. However, whether this translates into declining quality of care is unknown. Our objective was to determine how physician experience is associated with negative outcomes for patients admitted to hospital. ⋯ For patients admitted to general internal medicine teaching wards, we saw no negative association between physician experience and outcomes commonly used as proxies for quality of inpatient care.