BACKGROUND More focus on patient-centeredness in care for patients with type 2 diabetes requests increasing attention to diabetes quality management processes on patient-centeredness by managers in primary care groups and outpatient clinics. Although patient-centered care is ultimately determined by the quality of interactions between patients and clinicians at the practice level, it should be ...

BACKGROUND Patient choice is a major theme in current healthcare delivery. Little is known about patients' wishes regarding the timing of medical outpatient clinics. METHODS A questionnaire survey of 300 sequential patients attending cardiac and respiratory clinics to determine patients preferences for out of hours and weekend outpatient clinics. (Out of hours defined as a clinic after 5 pm o...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Palpitations are the most common complaint in cardiology outpatient clinics. These palpitations may be derived from paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) and can be easily overlooked. It is unclear whether inter-atrial conduction time (ICT) may predict the paroxysmal AF in out-patients that present with palpitations. We evaluated the ability of the ICT to predict paroxys...

There has been much concern about the wide variations in general practitioners' referral rates and the consequent implications for cost and quality of care. This has led to a call to evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of referrals. A collaborative audit of referrals to outpatient clinics was conducted by 127 general practitioners in 33 practices in the Oxford region. Records were ke...

One hundred and thirty-two patients discharged from a rheumatology unit were randomly allocated to general practitioner care, attendance at hospital outpatient clinics, or follow-up by a senior occupational therapist attached to the hospital treatment team. At the end of 1 and 2 years a number of clinical and functional tests were applied, and information was gathered about the provision and us...

BACKGROUND There has been little knowledge about dietary supplementation by the Chinese elderly. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the usage of dietary supplements by older adults in southern China. METHODS A total of 600 community-dwelling older adults were recruited from the outpatient clinics of three major hospitals in Foshan city between July 2007 and July 2008. Fa...

Outpatient clinic appointments are often not kept. There has been little study of the reasons for this, but failure to attend may affect future health. Our study was based on the children's outpatient department of a large inner city district general hospital. The parents of 34 children who had failed to keep appointments and of 12 who did attend were interviewed in depth and the appointment sy...

The objective of this study is to investigate how blood pressure is measured in different outpatient clinics. This is a retrospective study performed with 1,000 patients, randomly selected among patients followed in different outpatient clinics in Fortaleza, Brazil. Among the 1,000 patients, 962 had available records. The older the patient, the greater the possibility of having had blood pressu...

In Brazil, the struggle to build an universal, accessible and quality health system can be mistaken at first for an effort to redemocratize of our country, and may be characterized by a resistance to the conservative movement regarding public policies of the last decade. In 1986, the most important health political event of the second half of the Twentieth Century occured: the VIII National Hea...