JANUARY 1999

By joining forces with unions, some family physicians are hoping to overcome the unrealistic demands of managed care.

You'll get professional results with the author's time-tested tips.

You know many of your patients by name. You are concerned about their total health and well-being. And you've earned their trust and respect.

Using e-mail and the Web to connect with patients may sound like a hassle, but it can make patients' lives easier — and yours, too.

A well-designed survey can help you improve your practice. The key? ‘Keep it simple,’ and act on what you learn.

Many patients derive their impression of your practice from telephone contacts. Here are tips for doing a better job.

This patient's experience teaches lessons that at least one FP apparently hasn't learned.

For tips on conducting efficient office visits, enhancing physician-patient communications and more, look to the archives of Family Practice Management.

If you have already read or flipped through this fifth-anniversary issue, you'll see that the changes announced on the cover are more than cover deep. We haven't just redesigned FPM; we've stripped it down and rebuilt it.

The AAFP launched Family Practice Management during the 1993 debate over national health care reform, giving it the mission of helping family physicians adapt to changing times. At the time, perhaps not everyone recognized its importance. Some family physicians yet untouched by…

When it comes to updates from HCFA, two pieces of good news out of three isn't bad.

Coding fractional units of service | Documenting medical necessity for tests | Coding tests for therapeutic levels | Substitutions for bulleted exam elements | Same-day annual exam and flex sig | Consultation vs. ED visit | Coding telephone calls | Coding a sports physical…

Y2K update: Millennium bug isn't just HCFA's problem | HMO lets doctors choose referral physicians | A matter of trust | Groups call for patient privacy improvements | National health care spending slows ... | Physicians fare well, despite managed care | Four family physicians…

E-mail | Old charts | Hands on | Staff appreciation | Office aesthetics

Medicaid and “teaching physician” rules | PCPs and Stark II | Who can sign your prescriptions? | Tracking ED use

Preventive services are an important part of primary care. Few physicians would dispute that. But if someone were to ask you today how well your practice is performing in the area of preventive care, what would you say? Do you know for certain that your patients are getting the…

Traditional slides and overheads just don't grab attention like a computerized presentation can.

Since June 1997, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has made its MEDLINE database —more than 9 million references to articles published in 3,800 biomedical journals —available free of charge on the World Wide Web. And with MEDLINE online, searching the medical literature…

The physicians of this health system saw organizing as the only way to make their voices heard.

What on earth ever made you think that all work and no play was any way to live?