Cincinnati, OH, September 2, 2010 — The existence of chronic Lyme disease is an issue of sharp debate within the medical community. Some health care workers who call themselves “Lyme literate” insist that chronic Lyme disease is frequently diagnos…
Primary care physicians do not have the time to offer needed preventive health care to their patients, says a new Duke University Medical Center study. According to the study published in the April 2003 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, providing the recommended preventive maintenance for patients would take an estimated 7.4 hours out of a primary care physician’s day, leaving approximately 30 minutes for critical and chronic disease care.
Primary care physicians under a managed care system were more likely to refer patients to a pain specialist than other physicians were, according to a University of Washington study. The findings run contrary to common beliefs that managed care systems limit access to specialists in order to save money. But if that was true before, it is not true now, according to the findings, which are being published in the February issue of Health Services Research.
Diabetes management may improve when physicians use an interactive communication technique with patients. Unfortunately, physicians underuse this simple strategy, according to a new study, which appears in the January 13, 2003 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine.
Prior research has shown that patients fail to recall or comprehend as much as half of what they are told by their physicians, according to UCSF researchers. “In this study, we tried to identify simple communication techniques that make physicians more effective teachers,” said Dean Schillinger, MD, UCSF assistant professor of medicine at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center (SFGHMC) and lead author of the study.