Article Figures & Data
Additional Files
Supplemental Appendixes and Tables
Supplemental Appendix 1. Details on Sampling, Data Management, and Data Analysis; Supplemental Appendix 2. Three Contrasting Case Illustrations. Supplemental Table 1. Key Characteristics of Participating Practices and Approaches to Delivering Preventive Services.
Files in this Data Supplement:
- Supplemental data: Appendix 1-2 - PDF file, 5 pages, 113KB
- Supplemental data: Table - PDF file, 4 pages, 114KB
The Article in Brief
Delivery of Clinical Preventive Services in Family Medicine Offices
By Benjamin F. Crabtree, PhD, and colleagues
Background: Although doctors believe that preventing disease is important, they deliver clinical preventive services at low rates. Clinicians and practices have many demands on their time and resources, and little is known about how they incorporate and deliver preventive services among their many priorities. The goal of this research was to better understand the organizational features of primary care practice that help explain how and why practices deliver clinical preventive services. The study of Midwestern family medicine practices used medical records, observation of outpatient visits, and patient exit cards to calculate rates at which practices deliver preventive services.
What this study found: Practices develop individualized approaches for delivering preventive services, such as counseling to stop smoking, cholesterol screening, and immunizations, with no one approach being successful across practices. Delivery of preventive services is often crowded out by care of acute and chronic illnesses. Preventive services delivery rates are influenced by the economic concerns of the practice and whether the practice has a doctor who champions prevention and makes it a priority.
Implications
� Medical practices are diverse, so efforts at applying standardized processes for implementing preventive services are likely to fail.
� The variability of practices, their patients, and their communities need to be taken into account in developing efforts to increase the delivery of preventive services.