BACKGROUND The prevalence of multiple chronic diseases is increasing and is a common problem for primary health care providers. This study sought to determine the patient and health system burden of multiple chronic diseases among adults in Ontario, Canada, with a focus on the ambulatory health care system (outpatient primary health care and specialist services). METHODS This population-based...

OBJECTIVE  To assess whether continuity of care with a general practitioner is associated with hospital admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions for older patients. DESIGN  Cross sectional study. SETTING  Linked primary and secondary care records from 200 general practices participating in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink in England. PARTICIPANTS  230 472 patients aged b...

OBJECTIVE This report describes ambulatory care visits made to physician offices within the United States. Statistics are presented on selected physician patient, and visit characteristics for aggregated ambulatory care visits. METHODS The data presented in this report were collected from the 1995 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). NAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component ...

OBJECTIVE Our objective with this study was to assess the extent to which patients who are seen by practitioners in Pediatric Research in Office Settings, a national primary care practice-based research network, are representative of those who are seen in ambulatory office-based pediatric primary care in the United States. METHODS Pediatric Research in Office Settings patient data were collec...

BACKGROUND Chronic conditions are the most common themes in doctor-patient communication, especially for older patients with multimorbidity and their GPs. Former quantitative studies identified a variety of socio-demographic and health-related factors which were associated with the (dis-)agreement between medical records and patient self-reported diseases. The aim of this qualitative study was ...

Introduction Requested by both governmental and professional organisations, quality circles for physicians involved with ambulatory care began in Germany in the late 1980s (box 1). Development of quality improvement through peer review suited the particular characteristics of the German ambulatory care system (box 2). Physicians who work predominantly in single handed practices and who can feel...

OBJECTIVES This report describes ambulatory care visits made to physician offices within the United States. Statistics are presented on selected physician, patient, and visit characteristics of ambulatory care visits. METHODS The data presented in this report were collected from the 1996 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). The NAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component of the...

Policy-makers have always found it problematic to formulate fair and consistent counting rules for public hospital outpatient activities. In the context of output-based funding, such rules have consequences which can affect patient care. This paper reviews the rationale for organising multidisciplinary clinics and reports on a series of focus groups convened in four Melbourne teaching hospitals...

Objective. To examine trends in melanoma visits in the ambulatory care setting. Methods. Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) from 1979 to 2010 were used to analyze melanoma visit characteristics including number of visits, age and gender of patients, and physician specialty. These data were compared to US Census population estimates during the same time period. Results...

A programmed audiovisual introduction to a large obstetric-gynecologic clinic was developed for and evaluated b y nursing students w h o spent one or two weeks in the facility. This orientation is geared toward active learning and progress at each individual’s rate. Data show that this orientation is an effective and efficient substitute for faculty presentation of repetitive information. In si...