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 ...

BACKGROUND Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) are the most common symptomatic reason to seek ambulatory care, but many ARI visits may not be necessary. OBJECTIVE To measure the proportion of primary care ARI visits that may not require an office visit. METHODS We identified 58398 ARI visits to 14 primary care practices between May 2011 and May 2012 and randomly selected 500 visits, 439 of ...

PURPOSE To examine the relation between follow-up office visits after emergency discharge and the risk of emergency readmissions in patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). SUBJECTS AND METHODS We used population-based data to identify all patients in Alberta, Canada, who had at least one emergency visit for asthma or COPD between April 1, 1996, and March 31, 1997...

BACKGROUND Health information technology (HIT) may improve health care quality and outcomes, in part by making information available in a timelier manner. However, there are few studies documenting the changes in timely availability of data with the use of a sophisticated electronic medical record (EMR), nor a description of how the timely availability of data might differ with different types ...

The physician-patient relationship is part of the patient's larger social system and is influenced by the patient's family. A patient's family member can be a valuable source of health information and can collaborate in making an accurate diagnosis and planning a treatment strategy during the office visit. However, it is important for the physician to keep an appropriate balance when addressing...

(Fam Med 2006;38(10):693-5.) Editor’s Note: In this month’s column, Krupa Shah, MD, MPH, and Tricia Elliott, MD, of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine discuss how to teach learners to conduct a prevention visit. I thank Paul Paulman, MD, of the University of Nebraska for being the guest editor of this month’s column. I welcome your comments about this ...

BACKGROUND Studies using ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring have shown that in children and adolescents masked hypertension (MH) is not uncommon. This school-based study investigated the prevalence and the characteristics of MH diagnosed using home BP measurements. METHODS A total of 765 subjects aged 6-18 years were assessed with office (two visits, six readings) and home BP measureme...