CONTEXT Most health maintenance organizations offer products with loosened restrictions on patients' access to specialty care. One such product is the point-of-service (POS) plan, which combines "gatekeeping" arrangements with the ability to self-refer at increased out-of-pocket costs. Few data are available from formal evaluations of this new type of plan. OBJECTIVES To comprehensively descr...

Background: One of the challenges of implementing the family physician program is the decrease in the number of doctors, especially in rural and deprived areas, the present study aimed to determine the intentions of family physicians to persist in the health centers affiliated in Hormozgan city. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 195 physicians in the health centers implement...

Background. Commonly self-reported questions in population health surveys, such as "do you have a family physician?", represent one of the best-known sources of information about patients' attachment to family physicians. Is it possible to find a proxy for this information in administrative data? Objective. To identify the type of patient attachment to a family physician using administrative da...

Informed consent is a critical part of the pre-anesthetic interview and physician-patient relationship. Informed consent should include the nature of the anesthetic plan, the material risks and benefits, as well as the alternatives to the plan. A recent study indicated that even though systematic informed consent is required and performed by providers, patient comprehension is still lacking.1 F...