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Family Physician Health ManagementWe Need More of a Good Thing
Marjorie A. Bowman, MD, MPA;
Michael L. Adler, MD
Arch Fam Med. 1997;6(5):431-432.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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FAMILY PHYSICIANS pride themselves on providing cost-effective, continuous, excellent care, an ideal often, but not always, met. For example, 2 recurrent literature themes of areas in which we do not meet the ideal include the provision of immunizations or other preventive measures to all children and adults on schedule and the underuse of accepted drugs for atrial fibrillation and congestive heart failure.
Similarly, while we often think of medical overexpenditures as too many surgical procedures such as coronary bypass or prostate surgery, we have our own vulnerability to overuse—the overuse of common laboratory tests such as complete blood cell counts; the unnecessarily frequent visits to follow-up illnesses; and the prescription of too many overly broad, expensive antibiotics. No single episode of overuse seems expensive but in total, these family physician inefficiencies add up to large costs.
To help address these issues, we suggest thinking about "health management," a term we
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
Editor; Department of Family and Community Medicine Bowman Gray School of Medicine Winston-Salem, NC
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