Wall Compensation for Ultra Wideband Applications

Due to their low frequency contents, ultra wideband (UWB) signals have the ability to penetrate walls and obstacles. As the signal propagates through these obstacles, it gets attenuated, slows down, and gets dispersed. This paper demonstrates wall compensation for through-wall imaging, localization and communication receiver design purposes by first characterizing wave propagation through various building materials in the UWB frequency range. Knowledge of the walls obtained from the wall characterization is used to estimate and correct the position accuracy of a target object located behind the walls using three proposed methods namely; constant amplitude and delay (CDL), frequency dependent data (FFD), and data fitting methods (FIT). The obtained results indicated relatively acceptable measure of wall compensation for the three methods. Results from such work provide insight on how to develop algorithms for effective target position estimation in imaging and localization applications. They are also useful for channel modelling and link budget analysis

Waiting list prioritization guidelines being followed in Australia?

© The Author(s) 2014. Objective. When waiting lists are used to ration treatments for nonemergency procedures, a prioritization rule is required to ensure that urgent patients are admitted first. This study investigates how the introduction of an explicit prioritization guideline affected the prioritization behavior of doctors, who previously had full discretion for assigning patients. Design. The analysis exploits the publication of recommended priority categories in public hospitals. Taking the recommendations as a reference, deviations from the recommended priority assignments by doctors before and after the guideline publication are assessed. Multinomial logit models are used to control for patient and hospital characteristics. Heterogeneity in the impact of the guideline across patient characteristics is explored through interaction terms. Setting. The state of New South Wales, Australia, between July 2004 and December 2010. Participants. Admissions via waiting lists in public hospitals (N = 753,010). Main Outcome Measure. Priority categories assigned by doctors. Results. The guideline increased the likelihood that doctors would actually assign a semi-urgent priority to admissions with a recommended priority of semi-urgent by 11.7 percentage points (P < 0.000) and would assign a nonurgent priority to admissions with a recommended priority of non-urgent by 13.1 percentage points (P < 0.000). In contrast, the guideline lowered the likelihood of an urgent priority being assigned to admissions with a recommended priority of urgent by 13.7 percentage points (P < 0.000). Priority assignments are affected by payment status; specifically, a higher priority is given to paying patients, and this preferential treatment is not diminished by the presence of the guideline. Conclusion. The presence of a simple clinical priority guideline at the procedural level has not produced systematic, clinically based prioritization behaviors among doctors. The New South Wales priority guideline has curtailed assignments to the highest priority. This result raises a question concerning the usefulness of such a guideline in improving timely and equitable access to health care

Do doctors charge high income patients more?

When doctors are unconstrained in setting fees, they charge higher fees to high income patients. For a standard GP consultation, the average fee gap is 25% of a minimum price. Competition closes this gap, but not local area income. © 2012 Elsevier B.V

The Evolution of Out-of-Hospital Medical Costs to and through Retirement

© 2016 The Economic Society of Australia This paper shows how the cost of out-of-hospital medical services and prescription drugs change as Australians enter and live through retirement. We use a sample of over 65,000 retired individuals aged forty-five and over, and extract their Medicare claims for period 2005–2014. Analysing the expenditure distribution for up to eight years after retirement, the result shows that expenditure on medical services continues to increase while pharmaceutical expenditure declines for most retirees. Partially retired individuals have higher medical service cost but lower pharmaceutical cost, while those retiring prior to Age Pension age have slower growth in medical service and pharmaceutical costs