background: waiting time indicates the feasibility of access to medical services and can be measured as a performance indicator. long waiting times prohibit the provision of good services, waste patients’ time, and jeopardise patient satisfaction. therefore, patients' satisfaction from waiting time plays a significant role in quality assurance and management. methods: in this qualitative study,...

BACKGROUND The proportion of outpatient surgeries performed in physician offices has been increasing over time, raising concern about the impact on outcomes. OBJECTIVE To use a private insurance claims database to compare 7-day and 30-day hospitalization rates following relatively complex outpatient surgical procedures across physician offices, freestanding ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), ...

OBJECTIVES Despite a strong link between antibiotic use and resistance, and highly variable antibiotic consumption rates across the USA, drivers of differences in consumption rates are not fully understood. The objective of this study was to examine how provider density affects antibiotic prescribing rates across socioeconomic groups in the USA. METHODS We aggregated data on all outpatient an...

Providing Insights that Contribute to Better Health Policy W the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has identified information technology as playing a pivotal role in systematically improving the quality of clinical care and reducing health care costs, the health care industry adopts IT at a relatively slow pace compared with other industries. Recently, momentum for both public and private initiatives...

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 This report describes ambulatory care visits made to physician offices within the United States. Statistics are presented on selected characteristics of the physician's practice, the patient, and the visit. METHODS The data presented in this report were collected from the 1997 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). NAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component of the Nati...

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...

OBJECTIVES The objective of the study was to measure how access to primary health care in Mississippi varies by type of health insurance. METHODS We called primary care physician (general practitioner, family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, and pediatric) offices in Mississippi three times, citing different types of health insurance coverage in each call, and asked for a n...