The role of public health in providing primary care for the medically underserved.

Strategies designed to meet the health care needs of Americans should include the issues of access as well as financing. And primary care and clinical preventive services should receive as much national attention as acute care and long-term care. The public health system at the Federal, State, and local levels with its mandate to assure conditions in which people can be healthy must also be incorporated into the national debate. Publicly funded infrastructures for delivering primary health care have become a significant element of assuring access at the community level. This paper examines the expanding role of public health in assuring access to the delivery of primary health care and clinical preventive services to vulnerable populations within the larger issue of who should have access to care and how it should be made available. Special attention is paid to the part played by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the Public Health Service, which, in the Federal fiscal year that began on October 1, 1989, administered some $1.8 billion worth of programs for health care of targeted populations and for the support of training in the health professions.

Meeting the needs of people with AIDS: local initiatives and Federal support.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), one of the seven agencies of the Public Health Service, is working to meet some of the resource and patient service needs engendered by the epidemic of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Those actions derived from, and support the continuation, expansion, and replication of, initiatives at the community and State levels. HRSA is carrying out many of the recommendations of the Intragovernmental Task Force on AIDS Health Care Delivery by enhancing the AIDS training of health care personnel in prevention, diagnosis, and care and by counseling and encouraging the expansion of facilities outside hospitals to care for AIDS patients. The agency, through its pediatric AIDS demonstration projects, is working on models for the care of children with HIV infections. The needs of AIDS patients are being addressed through a drug therapy reimbursement program; demonstration grants to 13 projects to promote coordinated, integrated systems of care in the community; and grants for the development of intermediate and long-term care facilities for patients. Ten regional education and training centers, funded in 1987 and 1988, will increase the supply of health care providers prepared to diagnose and treat persons with HIV infections. Programs will be conducted for several thousand providers over the next 3 years, using such modalities as televised programs and train-the-trainer courses. The centers will also offer support and referral services for providers.

The Health Security Act: a complex and costly prescription for healthcare reform.

The crafters of the Administration's Health Security Act recognize the need for "fresh approaches" to measuring and improving the quality of the American healthcare system, believes David Sundwall, MD, Vice President and Medical Director of American Healthcare Systems, an alliance of 40 multihospital healthcare systems. He has concerns, however, about the complexity of the Clinton proposal--especially with regard to its data requirements--and the significant financial investments that will be required for the plan to succeed.

Quality of care developments. 1993 update.

This monograph offers an overview of quality of care developments at the federal and state government levels, as well as in the private sector. Although health care reform legislation focuses on access, costs, and delivery systems, initiatives involving the quality of care not only will continue but are included in most of the reform efforts being proposed and those already under way. At the federal level... At the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), publication of Medicare mortality data is delayed and the Peer Review Organization (PRO) program is undergoing a major change of emphasis under a "quality improvement initiative." The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act (CLIA) has taken effect amidst controversy and further rulemaking is expected to correct flaws. The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) is forging ahead with new practice guidelines while it starts to evaluate their effectiveness. Data on the patient outcomes in organ transplant centers, first published last year, now will be published on a regular basis. The National Practitioner Data Bank continues functioning amidst criticism and varying recommendations for change, from excluding information on small malpractice claims (e.g., less than $30,000) to opening up the data bank to the public (as proposed by Rep. Ron Wyden). Other federal developments include various quality-related reports from the Inspector General of HHS, the General Accounting Office, the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, and the Physician Payment Review Commission, plus QI initiatives in Veterans Administration hospitals and the CHAMPUS programs. Among the states... Florida has included outcome data reporting and dissemination in its health care reform plan while Illinois struggles with whether physician-specific data will be made public. An innovative effort to test whether practice guidelines can reduce malpractice costs is underway in Maine, while Indiana began an outcome data project. Among accreditation agencies and associations... The Joint Commission is moving ahead with its Agenda for Change, including nationwide reporting of quality indicators and an expansion of accreditation to health care delivery systems and hospice programs. The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association continue to support practice guideline development with education and research, while a number of hospitals and health systems are using comparative outcome data and clinical benchmarking to study and improve care. Conclusion... There is certainly some duplication of effort and the question of value (return on investment) must be raised given the cost of all these efforts. Without question, however, quality of care initiatives are omnipresent and challenging.

A method for evaluating patient care and auditing skills of family practice residents.

A system of chart review is presented which develops both auditing skills and patient care skills. The model suggested is a flexible one, applicable at various levels of training in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Its application to family practice resident training is shown by comparing the performances of residents at the beginning and end of a demonstration period.

Differences in the outcomes of acute episodes of care provided by various types of family practitioners.

This study was designed to compare the outcomes achieved in a series of acute care episodes by different levels of family practice providers working in the clinic setting. The study utilizes a method which depends upon the provider to estimate level of function expected and earliest date of recovery for each episode. When the patients are viewed as a single group, those patients treated by the medex appear to fare considerably better and those seen by a faculty member do worse; however, when each functional status group is examined separately, only the asymptomatic but clinically ill patients (45 cases) show a statistically significant difference in outcomes among the providers, with the medex having good results and the faculty poor results.