KEY FINDINGS Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2012 •Physician office visit rates for well care were lower for school-aged (those aged 6-11 years) children (31 per 100 population) and adolescents aged 12-17 years (29 per 100 population) than for younger children (349 and 74 per 100 population for children under age 1 year and 1-5 years, respectively). •Visit rates for well ...

BACKGROUND Clinicians cannot provide all recommended preventive services in a single office visit and must learn to prioritize. This skill is not overtly addressed in medical school. METHODS We designed a workshop to teach third-year medical students to prioritize preventive services during an office visit. In a prospective controlled trial, we compared performance on a standardized patient c...

The American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement "Options Counseling for the Pregnant Adolescent Patient" recommends the basic content of the pediatrician's counseling for an adolescent facing a new diagnosis of pregnancy. However, options counseling is just one aspect of what may be one of the more challenging scenarios in the pediatric office. Pediatricians must remain alert to the possibi...

The purpose of this preliminary study is to develop an operational definition of the closure phase of the medical visit. A listening group developed a definition of closure by consensus based on audiotaped data from 22 office visits to physicians. The group noted new problems in closure not previously raised. Closure was defined as the final phase of the medical visit in which the doctor and pa...

A methodology has been developed to determine the relative values of surgical procedures and medical office visits on the basis of resource costs. The time taken to perform the service and the complexity of that service are the most critical variables. Inter-specialty differences in the opportunity costs of training and overhead expenses are also considered. Results indicate some important diff...

OBJECTIVE This study examined trends in the prescription of antipsychotic drugs in a nationally representative sample of physicians in nonfederal office-based clinical practice during the 1990s. METHODS The authors analyzed physician-reported data from annual National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys between 1989 and 1997 using weighted national estimates of physician visits during which antip...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to determine whether self-perceived health status is predictive of a doctor's office visit in the Longitudinal Study on Aging (LSOA). METHODS This was a population-based longitudinal study of persons aged ≥70 years who participated in the Study on Aging in 1984 and a follow-up survey of the LSOA in 1986. The cohort for the study consisted of 560 blacks...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assess the risk of early return visits for pediatric patients using a retail clinic. METHODS We used medical records of pediatric patients seen in a large group practice in Minnesota in the first 2 months of 2008. A retrospective analysis of electronic patient records was performed on 2 groups of patients: those using the retail clinic (n = 200) and ...

Because electronic communication is quick, convenient, and inexpensive for most patients, care that is truly patient centered should promote the use of such communication between patients and providers, even using it as a substitute for office visits when clinically appropriate. Despite the potential benefits of electronic communication, fewer than 7 percent of providers used it in 2008. To lea...

BACKGROUND Limited data are available on physicians' accuracy in coding for their services. The purpose of this study was to determine the current procedural terminology (CPT) evaluation and management coding accuracy of family physicians and define demographic variables associated with coding accuracy. METHODS Six hundred randomly selected active members of the Illinois Academy of Family Phy...