Are Remittances a Substitute for Credit? Carrying the Financial Burden of Health Shocks in National and Transnational Households

IVF carries a considerable physical, emotional and financial burden. Therefore, it would be useful to be able to predict the likelihood of success for each couple. The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to develop a prediction model to estimate the probability of a live birth at 12 months after one completed IVF cycle (all fresh and frozen embryo transfers from the same oocyte retrieval). We analyzed data collected from 2600 women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF)/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) at a single center in Vietnam between April 2014 and December 2015. All patients received gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist stimulation, followed by fresh and/or frozen embryo transfer (FET) on Day 3. Using Cox regression analysis, five predictive factors were identified: female age, total dose of recombinant follicle stimulating hormone used, type of trigger, fresh or FET during the first transfer, and number of subsequent FET after the first transfer. The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve for the final model was 0.63 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.60‒0.65) and 0.60 (95% CI 0.57‒0.63) for the validation cohort. There was no significant difference between the predicted and observed probabilities of live birth (Hosmer-Lemeshow test, p > 0.05). The model developed had similar discrimination to existing models and could be implemented in clinical practice.

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Direct cost of treatment in patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction in Vietnam

MedPharmRes ◽

10.32895/ump.mpr.3.3.2 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 7-11

Author(s):

Sy Van Hoang ◽

Tuan Thanh Tran ◽

Kha Minh Nguyen

Keyword(s):

Myocardial Infarction ◽

Direct Cost ◽

Treatment Cost ◽

Financial Burden ◽

Intervention Group ◽

St Elevation Myocardial Infarction ◽

Related Factors ◽

Female Ratio ◽

Conservative Group ◽

St Elevation

Background: Acute myocardial infarction has become a serious financial burden for patients, healthcare system, and society. It is therefore necessary to assess treatment cost of myocardial infarction that had been conducted in many countries in the world and still not fully analysed in Vietnam. Thus, we sought to describe acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction treatment cost and analyse related factors to acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction treatment cost. Methods and Materials: A retrospective cross-sectional study. Patients who was diagnosed by ST-elevation myocardial infarction at Cho Ray Hospital from June 2018 to February 2019, satisfied inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: We collected 130 patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction with male: female ratio of 3:1, at average age of mean ± Standard deviation (SD) = 62.9 ± 12.6. The length of stay in hospital was mean ± SD = 7.1 ± 3.3 days and the median direct cost of MI was 68,902,500 VND (interquartile range (IQR): 5,737,200 – 104,266,000 VND). The average total cost of acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction in the percutaneous coronary intervention group was more than 16 times as the conservative group. The treatment strategies and hospital complications were major factors that affected treatment cost. Conclusion: The median direct cost of acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction was accounted for 68,902,500 VND. Complications directly affected costs.

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The Unusual Cruelty of Nursing Homes Behind Bars

Federal Sentencing Reporter ◽

10.1525/fsr.2020.32.5.264 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (5) ◽

pp. 264-271

Author(s):

Rachel E. López

Keyword(s):

Nursing Homes ◽

Human Dignity ◽

Prison Population ◽

Financial Burden ◽

The Elderly ◽

The United States ◽

Term Care ◽

Trained Staff ◽

State Prisons ◽

The Cost

The elderly prison population continues to rise along with higher rates of dementia behind bars. To maintain the detention of this elderly population, federal and state prisons are creating long-term care units, which in turn carry a heavy financial burden. Prisons are thus gearing up to become nursing homes, but without the proper trained staff and adequate financial support. The costs both to taxpayers and to human dignity are only now becoming clear. This article squarely addresses the second dimension of this carceral practice, that is the cost to human dignity. Namely, it sets out why indefinitely incarcerating someone with dementia or other neurocognitive disorders violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. This conclusion derives from the confluence of two lines of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. First, in Madison v. Alabama, the Court recently held that executing someone (in Madison’s case someone with dementia) who cannot rationally understand their sentence amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Second, in line with Miller v. Alabama, which puts life without parole (LWOP) sentences in the same class as death sentences due to their irrevocability, this holding should be extended to LWOP sentences. Put another way, this article explains why being condemned to life is equivalent to death for someone whose neurodegenerative disease is so severe that they cannot rationally understand their punishment.

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