According to a 2007 report, most dermatologists predicted that biologic therapies would be used more frequently in the next year; did not follow formularies they considered too restrictive; and expressed concern about denials of paper claims and reimbursements for surgical procedures combined with office visits.

EHR data are desirable for secondary use in health research but are known to have inconsistencies. The context of their origination, or provenance, may affect the comparability of EHR data for secondary usage. We investigated suspected differences in demographic and comorbidity data and availability of information among four health care settings: ambulatory office visits, hospital inpatients, e...

BACKGROUND Patients recall less than half the information provided to them by their physicians. AIMS The aim of this study was to use quality-improvement (QI) techniques to enhance patient understanding of diagnosis, management and follow-up at the end of the office visit. METHOD QI techniques including stakeholder analysis, process mapping and plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles were used in a...

OBJECTIVES We compared the likelihood that a tobacco user would receive treatment with the likelihood that an adult with another common chronic condition would receive treatment for that condition at an office visit. METHODS We analyzed data from the 2005-2007 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey to compare the proportion of US office visits at which tobacco users and individuals with hype...

BACKGROUND The multiple competing demands of the busy office visit have been shown to interfere with delivery of preventive services. In this study we used physician recommendations for screening mammography to examine the relative importance of physician, patient, and visit characteristics in determining on which patient visits this preventive service will be provided. METHODS Physicians in ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Family physicians frequently err when applying Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) evaluation and management (E&M) codes to their office visits, but there are few published prospective studies on educational interventions to improve coding. METHODS Over a 6-year intervention period, 429 resident patient notes from return clinic visits were recoded by a faculty membe...

BACKGROUND The outcomes of corticosteroid injection for trigger finger are well documented only with short-term follow-up. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the long-term effectiveness of a single injection and to examine predictors of success up to ten years after injection. METHODS This case series analyzed 366 first-time corticosteroid injections in flexor tendon sheaths f...

OBJECTIVE This report presents demographic and practice characteristics of nonfederal physicians who were primarily engaged in office-based patient care in the United States during 2003-04. METHODS The data in this report were collected during the physician induction interview for the 2003 and 2004 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS). NAMCS includes a national probability sample ...