pcps

Most surgeons-in-training end up giving themselves accidental injuries, typically by sticking themselves with needles or sharp instruments, but a new study says few actually report their mishaps despite the threat of AIDS, hepatitis and other blood-borne illnesses.

The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, concludes rushed surgical residents are reluctant to report such injuries because it would take time, could slow career growth and might be …

Retail clinics: Accepting the inevitable
Retail clinics have gone from an interesting idea to an exploding healthcare industry sector in an amazingly short time. With …

Adding yet another wrinkle to the agency's complex relationship with doctors, CMS may begin profiling physicians and targeting those it deems inefficient sometime next year. Herbert Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of CMS, told a House subcommittee that the agency will have the data and computer capacity available to do the tracking as soon as mid-2008. To monitor efficiency, CMS would compare levels of tests physicians order for certain types of patients to tests ordered by other …

Primary care costs much less than specialty care, but insurers aren't necessarily taking that into account, according to a new study. The study, by HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, noted that while orthopedist fees averaged $210 per visit, and cardiologists $232 per visit, primary care physicians typically charge $100 per visit. But insurers still penalize primary care, requiring patients to pay an average of 20 percent of PCP costs out-of-pocket. Despite higher costs, …

A new program is getting under way which will help primary care residents prepare to run practices that serve more effectively as a "personal medical home" for patients. The program is funded by a $1.7 million grant from the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors and the American Board of Family Medicine, in collaboration with the American Academy of Family Physicians. Fourteen family residency programs are taking part in the initiative, dubbed "Preparing the Personal …

While most physicians provide care that falls within established guidelines, about one in ten provided more services than patients needed, according to a GAO study of recent Medicare data. The researchers found that inefficient physicians accounted for 10 percent of the primary care physician population and 2 to 6 percent of specialists.

To establish the efficiency measures, GAO researchers looked at the physician profiling systems used by 10 health care purchasing organizations. …

Here's a straightforward approach to attracting and keeping primary care doctors in your community. Bank of America has agreed to donate $5 million to boost the supply of Massachusetts-based primary care doctors, largely by paying off loans for medical students, residents and a handful of doctors already practicing in health centers. The idea is that if they serve in one of 23 community health centers or Boston Health Care for the Homeless, they'll be eligible to have $25,000 of their …

While they agree that pay for performance approaches can improve care, about three-quarters of primary care physicians worry that public data reporting would have a negative impact on patient relationships, according to a new study published this month in Health Affairs. The research, which involved a survey of 550 randomly chosen general internists, concluded that physicians weren't satisfied that P4P schemes would measure the right factors in the right way. While most PCPs felt …

The number of U.S. medical students choosing primary care work is falling like a stone, largely because primary care doctors make so much less than specialists do, according to a new study by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The study offers a similar cautionary note as a PCP study released last year by the American College of Physicians (ACP). The ACP found that the number of internal medicine trainees planning on PCP work fell from 54 percent in 1998 to 25 percent in …

While most patients think doctors care about them and treat them well, many are quite annoyed by some of the administrative issues they face when visiting their primary care provider, according to a new survey conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The CRNRC polled 39,000 patients and 335 primary care doctors to find out what relationships between PCPs and patients were like these days. What they found was that while most patients felt doctors were providing good …