Physician assistants (PAs) were introduced in the Netherlands in 2002 and are now widely deployed. However, little is known about patient satisfaction with Dutch PAs. A comparative study of patient satisfaction was undertaken in the primary care setting. Patients seen by general practitioners (GPs) and PAs were surveyed using the Consumer Quality Index, a European quality survey instrument. Qua...

Belleau begins to answer the question left to the lower courts in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Grady. The court opined, in the Belleau case, that Wisconsin’s GPS monitoring program is reasonable, after considering numerous factors, including the purpose of the program, the invasiveness of the search that a GPS poses, studies on sex offender recidivism, and the reasonableness of the se...

OBJECT The authors investigated return-to-play duration for initial and recurrent concussion in the same season in 2 teams of junior (16-21-year-old) ice hockey players during a regular season. METHODS The authors conducted a prospective cohort study during 1 junior regular season (2009-2010) of 67 male fourth-tier ice hockey players (mean age 18.2 ± 1.2 years [SD], range 16-21 years) from 2 ...

Most physicians believe that to provide the best possible care to their patients, they must commit to continuous learning. For the most part, it appears the learning activities currently available to physicians do not provide opportunities for meaningful continuous learning. At the same time there have been increasing concerns about the quality of health care, and a variety of groups within org...

Physicians, health plans, and health systems are increasingly evaluated and rewarded based on Health Plan Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) and HEDIS-like performance measures. Concurrently, employers and health plans continue to try to control expenditures by increasing out-of-pocket costs for patients. The authors use fixed-effect logit models to assess how rising copayment rates...

Beginning in 1984, the long-term trend of increasing utilization of inpatient hospital care by Medicare enrollees reversed. As Medicare patients increasingly received care in outpatient hospital facilities, ambulatory surgical centers, and physicians' offices, the structure of charges for physicians' services changed significantly. Medical services by physicians in inpatient hospitals declined ...

BACKGROUND Aspects of U.S. clinical abortion service provision such as gestational age limits, charges for abortion services, and anti-abortion harassment can impact the accessibility of abortion; this study documents changes in these measures between 2008 and 2012. METHODS In 2012 and 2013, we surveyed all known abortion-providing facilities in the United States (n = 1,720). This study summa...

The traditional health care landscape, hospitals and private physicians' offices, is undergoing a major shift of focus. "Womb to tomb" care facilities, typified by boutique developments, medical malls, and health parks, are just now in their infancy. This article provides an overview of the likely direction of health care design as shaped by consumer demand.

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 To identify prevalence of previous blood pressure measurement and analyze some associated factors in adolescents. METHODS This cross-sectional study included 6,077 adolescents aged 14 to 19 years. Demographic characteristics included (sex, age, period of study, region of residence, work, skin color, and economic) status, history of blood pressure measurement within last 12 months, l...