PURPOSE We undertook a study to examine the characteristics of countries exporting physicians to the United States according to their relative contribution to the primary care supply in the United States. METHODS We used data from the World Health Organization and from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile to gather sociodemographic, health system, and health characteristics o...

A new type of independent practice association has been organized to encourage primary-care physicians in private practice to become coordinators and financial managers for all medical care. Each patient chooses one internist, family or general physician or pediatrician and must be referred by that physician for all specialized care. The primary-care physician authorizes payment from his own ac...

BACKGROUND Our research group advanced a health insurance theory to explain Canada's cancer care advantages over America. The late Barbara Starfield theorized that Canada's greater primary care-orientation also plays a critically protective role. We tested the resultant Starfield-Gorey theory by examining the effects of poverty, health insurance and physician supplies, primary care and speciali...

recognizing the advantages of primary care as a means of improving the entire health system, this text comments on reforms of publicly funded primary health centers, and the rapid development of private forprofit providers in sweden. many goals and expectations are connected to such reforms, which equally require critical analyses of scarce resources, professional trust/motivation and business ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Student perceptions of day-to-day physician work life, and relationships between these perceptions and specialty choices, have not been quantitatively explored. The study's purposes were to measure student perceptions of primary care and specialist physician work life, including administrative burden, time pressures, autonomy, and relationships with patients, to determ...

OBJECTIVE To review evidence-based guidance on the primary care of Alzheimer's disease and clinical research on models of primary care for Alzheimer's disease to present a practical summary for the primary care physician regarding the assessment and management of the disease. DATA SOURCES References were obtained via search using keywords Alzheimer's disease AND primary care OR collaborative ...

BACKGROUND Primary health care in industrialized countries faces major challenges due to demographic changes, an increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and a shortage of primary care physicians. One approach to counteract these developments might be to reduce primary care physicians' workload supported by the use of health information technology (HIT) and non-physician practice staff. In 200...

OBJECTIVE To provide a more detailed evaluation of the attitudes and opinions of Connecticut's primary-care physicians, the practice environment in which care is provided, and how the evolving practice environment might affect the availability and quality of medical care in the state. METHODS Primary-care physicians affiliated with the Connecticut Chapter of the American College of Physicians...

n engl j med 360;26 nejm.org june 25, 2009 2693 levels.1 Overloaded primary care practices, whose doctors are aptly compared to hamsters on a treadmill, struggle to provide prompt access and high-quality care. Three major factors contribute to this crisis. First, primary care physicians earn far lower incomes than procedural specialists, reducing career attractiveness for medical students with ...

Hypertension has been the leading risk factor contributing to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, which needs comprehensive measures to manage and can be controlled effectively in primary care. In the health care context of South Korea, where specialists can see patients directly at their own community clinics and there has been no consensus on the definition of primary care, the authors us...