OBJECTIVE To examine the extra cost of using higher-priced drugs as initial therapy for dermatophyte infections, because the many available effective drugs vary considerably in cost. DESIGN Cost analysis from the purchaser's perspective, comparing two prototypical regimens to treat tinea pedis: one in which all patients initially receive a lower-priced drug and those with unresponsive infecti...

OBJECTIVE To provide FPs with detailed knowledge of automated office blood pressure (AOBP) measurement, its potential role in primary care, and its proper use in the diagnosis and management of hypertension. SOURCES OF INFORMATION Comprehensive monitoring and collection of scientific articles on AOBP by the authors since its introduction. MAIN MESSAGE Automated office blood pressure measure...

OBJECTIVE This report describes ambulatory medical care visits to nonfederally employed, office-based physicians in the United States during 1995 and 1996. Statistics are presented on selected physician, patient, and visit characteristics. METHODS The data in this report were collected in the 1995 and 1996 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS). The NAMCS is part of the ambulatory c...

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. ...

AIMS As the proportion of people with multiple chronic conditions grows, so does the complexity of patient care. Although office-based visits to subspecialists are expected to be intense, due to the focused nature of the visit, the complexity of office-based visits to primary care physicians has yet to be explored in depth. To explore complexity, we looked at diabetes as a case study to determi...

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...

This study estimates a fixed effects ordered logit model physician office visit billing using claims data from South Carolina Medicaid and the State Employees Health Plan. The results find code creep increasing expenditures on physician office visits at a rate of 2.2 percent annually for both programs, with no significant difference in the rate between the two. The models also indicate that phy...