Physician's Weekly Article - Assessing Quality in Primary Care Visits

       A national retrospective analysis has found that adult primary care visit frequency, quality, and duration appear to have increased between 1997 and 2005. During this timeframe, adult primary care visits to physicians increased from 273 million to 338 million annually. The authors noted modest relationships between visit duration and quality of care. When compared with data from 1997 to 2001, patients receiving care from 2002 to 2005 noted improved quality of care for some counseling and screening indicators as well as medication indicators. The provision of counseling or screening required additional physician time, but ensuring that patients were taking appropriate medications appeared to be independent of visit duration.

      Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, November 9, 2009.