During the past decade, many rural jurisdictions in Canada have witnessed precipitous closures of maternity services. Although reasons for closures are often location-specific, they tend to be related to human resource challenges involving nurses, general practitioner surgeons, family physicians and specialists; lack of access to specialized services (e.g., limited access to epidural anesthesia...

background following the implementation of family physician plan in rural areas, the quantity of provided services has been increased, but what leads on the next topic is the improvement in expected quality of service, as well. the present study aims at determining the gap between patients’ expectation and perception from the quality of services provided by family physicians during the spring a...

introduction: family physician plan in iran was conducted to establish service referral system. its urban step began in 2012 and it was supposed that the effectiveness is enhanced and the costs are reduced. the implementation of this program has faced some challenges, especially in human resources management. the aim of this study was to optimally allocate human resources for urban family physi...

There is currently a major shortage of rural physicians in the United States. Rural US citizens should receive the same quality of care and the same access to health care as are available in urban and suburban settings for the middle and upper classes. Yet, at present, substantial and increasing differences exist in access to health care for our rural citizens. The overall supply of physicians ...

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the percentage of family physicians accepting new Medicare patients declined from 84.1% in 2000 to 76.1% in 2003 (Trude & Ginsburg 2002). That decline coincided with projected annual decreases in Medicare physician payment announced in March 2002 and March 2003. The decline in the percentage of family physicians accepting new Medica...

INTRODUCTION In Ontario, Canada, there is a tendency to conflate rural and northern issues and although much of northern Ontario is rural, this is not exclusively the case. In this study, data were utilized from the licensing and regulatory body of physicians in Ontario to provide a more nuanced understanding of the distribution of the physician population across varying degrees of rurality in ...

CONTEXT An important consideration determining health outcomes is to have an adequate supply of physicians to address the health needs of the community. PURPOSE The purpose of this investigation was to assess scope of practice factors for Idaho rural family physicians in 2012 and to compare these results to findings from a 2007 study. METHODS The target population in this study was rural fa...

CONTEXT Scope of practice is an important factor in both training and recruiting rural family physicians. PURPOSE To assess rural Idaho family physicians' scope of practice and to examine variations in scope of practice across variables such as gender, age and employment status. METHODS A survey instrument was developed based on a literature review and was validated by physician educators, ...