The Office Practice of Internists

The data on patient load were collected in the course of a study developed in cooperation with the New York State Society of Internal Medicine, interested in the devolopment of methodology for evaluating the quality of care being rendered by their members in their own offices.

Abstract

Data about the number of patients seen by physicians are relatively scarce despite their importance to the assessment of the population's medical needs. The opportunity to gather such information from a large group of specialists was therefore gladly accepted by the authors. The major results are contained herein. The data on patient load were collected in the course of a study developed in cooperation with the New York State Society of Internal Medicine. This organization was interested in the devolopment of methodology for evaluating the quality of care being rendered by their members in their own offices. As a preliminary to the methodological study, information on the background and characteristics of the practice of the society's members was obtained by means of a questionnaire mailed to each member. At the time of the study, the society had 960 members, of whom 505 returned a completed questionnaire to the study group.