With the prevalence of diagnosed autism on the rise, increased efforts are needed to support surveillance, research, and case management. Challenges to collect, analyze and share typical and unique patient information and observations are magnified by expanding provider caseloads, delays in treatment and patient office visits, and lack of sharable data. This paper outlines recommended principle...

The federal government advocates the practice of routinely providing an after-visit summary (AVS) to patients after each office-based visit as an element of stage 1 meaningful use. A significant potential benefit of the AVS is improved patient engagement achieved by enabling patients and family members to better understand and retain key health information. The methodology for this study was a ...

Use of oral chemotherapy or targeted agents is shifting how cancer treatment is administered, moving it from supervised office visits to self-administration at home. This study examines issues related to overadherence to oral agents that were noted during a trial conducted by the authors comparing an automated voice system to strategies to reduce symptom severity and improve adherence. Overadhe...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether clinician prompting regarding a child's symptom severity and guideline recommendations at the time of an office visit improves the delivery of preventive asthma care. DESIGN Randomized controlled trial. SETTING Two inner-city pediatric practices in Rochester, NY. PARTICIPANTS Two hundred twenty-six children with persistent asthma (aged 2-12 years) presenting...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Primary care, an essential determinant of health system equity, efficiency, and effectiveness, is threatened by inadequate supply and distribution of the provider workforce. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has been a frontrunner in the use of nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs). Evaluation of the roles and impact of NPs and PAs in the VHA i...

OBJECTIVE This report assesses the impact of a series of education sessions delivered to office staff on the delivery of smoking cessation services among patients seeking care at a community-based women's health center. METHODS A quasi-experimental design was used to examine the delivery of smoking cessation services to patients in a medical office before and after office staff attended a ser...

Fatigue is a serious, QoL-limiting symptom of many neurologic conditions. Physicians should be thorough and consistent in their assessment for this problem and not let motor symptoms monopolize an office visit. Although the use of pharmacology to treat this problem has predominantly only anecdotal evidence of efficacy, several nonpharmacologic interventions may prove helpful. The directions of ...

Patient satisfaction is an individual's cognitive evaluation of, and emotional reaction to, his or her health-care experience. This concept is increasing in importance as survey data are being used by health-care facilities for self-assessment, accreditation requirements, and compensation formulas. High patient satisfaction is associated with increased market share, financial gains, decreased m...

INTRODUCTION Persons living in rural areas tend to have poorer health than do those who live in urban areas. These disparities have been attributed, in part, to lack of access to care. As a proxy measure of access to care, researchers examined the rate of office visits after emergency department (ED) treatment for asthma between rural and urban areas and pediatric and adult patients in Hawaii. ...

Primary health care providers identify and treat many patients who are at risk for or are already experiencing alcohol-related problems. Brief interventions—counseling delivered by primary care providers in the context of several standard office visits—can be a successful treatment approach for many of these patients. Numerous trials involving a variety of patient populations have indicated tha...