A physician argues in favor of moving family residency programs into local ambulatory clinics as a way to strengthen community-based physicians and link practical patient care to academic medical centers.
A residency program director supports a shortened 2-year family medicine residency program that emphasizes primary care in the ambulatory setting and also allows family physicians to receive additional postgraduate training in their specialty areas of interest.
Marguerite Duane, MD, MHA and Robert L. Phillips, Jr., MD, MSPH
Two physicians argue in favor of extending residency training for family medicine physicians to 4 years so they will be adequately prepared to participate in family medicine's new model of care.
The objective is to compare the costs of providing the same level of quality. When resource-use and quality measures are juxtaposed, the resources used to provide the same level of quality can be compared.
There is much to be gained by integrating ethics and EBM, focusing on the implications of uncertainty for clinical practice and exploring the effect a clinician’s values have on acquisition and application of evidence.
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
Shivan J. Mehta, MD, MBA and David A. Asch, MD, MBA
Outcome-based payment more closely aligns payments with what patients want, which is better health rather than more health care. But these approaches remain challenging to implement.
Measuring outcomes alone is not the answer. There should be a way to reward the doctor for educating a patient about lifestyle modifications and then documenting that the care provided followed patient preferences.