Ongoing efforts to profile physicians on their relative cost of care have been criticized because they do not account for differences in patients' socioeconomic status (SES).
Insomnia is very common, but most of its sufferers don't receive a diagnosis or treatment. However, educating primary care providers and other professionals about insomnia can help.
Health care providers are encouraged to implement “shared decision making” in which patients and doctors together choose the treatment that is best for each patient. However, doctors need more instruction on how to engage patients and better information systems to make sure patients know their options and receive individualized care.
The average physician spends nearly 11 percent of an assumed forty-year career with an unresolved, open malpractice claim. The long time it takes for a case is resolved is distressing for both doctor and patient.
Physicians could more frequently address topics that may influence patient dietary supplement use, such as the risks, effectiveness, and costs of supplements.
This commentary explores the reasons why Boston's emergency response to the Marathon bombings was so effective and draws implications for other cities' preparedness efforts.
Commercial health plans and Medicare are using cost profiles to identify which physicians account for more health care spending than others, while devising strategies to reward those who provide quality care at a lower cost. Doctors with less than 10 years of experience had 13.2 percent higher overall costs than those with 40 or more years of experience.
This research letter examines growth in physician earnings compared with other health professionals.
People who visit retail medical clinics are less likely to return to a primary care physician for future illnesses and have less continuity of care. However, no evidence suggests that retail medical clinics disrupt preventive care or management of diabetes, two important measures of quality of primary care.
Health plan members can be encouraged successfully to access physician-level quality data using an inexpensive letter and automated phone call.
Results from comparative effectiveness research seldom influence clinical practice.
The authors assessed the appropriateness of recommendations for hysterectomies done for nonemergency and nononcologic indications for 497 California women. Seventy percent of the hysterectomies were judged to have been recommended inappropriately.
The risk of medical malpractice varies substantially according to physician specialty.
This article explores provider opinions about responsibility for medication adherence and examine physician--patient interactions to illustrate how adherence discussions are initiated.
Physician organizations (POs)—independent practice associations and medical groups—located in lower socioeconomic status (SES) areas may score poorly in pay-for-performance (P4P) programs.
Treatment of stroke patients is highly time-sensitive. The risk of death or disability caused by intracranial hemorrhage may increase with both stroke size and time.
In the 1960s, a new paradigm for training physicians emerged: one that combined clinical training and its focus on individual patients with a research training focused on studying the health of populations.
Pediatric residents who support further reductions in work-hours believe reductions have positive effects on patient care, education, and quality of life.
Emergency medicine is poised as a specialty to respond to health care changes and to lead the charge in transforming a disconnected, inefficient, and costly system.
The likelihood of malpractice suits and the size of indemnity payments vary across specialties, but by age 65, 75% of physicians in low-risk specialties had faced a malpractice claim, as compared with 99% of physicians in high-risk specialties.
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