HMO physicians are generally less satisfied with their jobs and more likely to intend to leave their practices than physicians in many other practice settings. Our data suggest that HMO physicians' satisfaction with staff, community, resources, and the duration of new patient visits should be assessed and optimized. Whether providing more time for patient encounters would improve job satisfaction in HMOs or other practice settings remains to be determined.
HRONIC NONCANCER PAIN IS associated with considerable physical and psychosocial impairment, distress, comorbid depression, and increased health care use and costs. [1][2][3][4] Many primary care patients report chronic pain, 2,5,6 most commonly musculoskeletal pain. 2,7 Guidelines for chronic pain treatment have been developed. 8,9 However, implementation has been problematic, especially in busy primary care practices in which access to recommended treatment components may be limited.Multifaceted, collaborative interventions can promote guideline-concordant care and improve outcomes for chronic conditions in primary care. 10,11 These interventions, based on the chronic care model, 10 attempt to optimize patient and clinician interactions via education and activation while providing system support, including care management and clinician feedback. Several investigators have demonstrated improvements in pain intensity and pain-related function in studies of interventions using collaborative approaches. 12-14 However, one of these studies used a pre-post design, 14 and the
Our objective was to use a community-based participatory research approach to identify and compare barriers to healthcare experienced by autistic adults and adults with and without other disabilities. To do so, we developed a Long- and Short-Form instrument to assess barriers in clinical and research settings. Using the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist–Long Form, we surveyed 437 participants (209 autistic, 55 non-autistic with disabilities, and 173 non-autistic without disabilities). Autistic participants selected different and greater barriers to healthcare, particularly in areas related to emotional regulation, patient-provider communication, sensory sensitivity, and healthcare navigation. Top barriers were fear or anxiety (35% (n = 74)), not being able to process information fast enough to participate in real-time discussions about healthcare (32% (n = 67)), concern about cost (30% (n = 62)), facilities causing sensory issues 30% ((n = 62)), and difficulty communicating with providers (29% (n = 61)). The Long Form instrument exhibited good content and construct validity. The items combined to create the Short Form had predominantly high levels of correlation (range 0.2–0.8, p < 0.001) and showed responsiveness to change. We recommend healthcare providers, clinics, and others working in healthcare settings to be aware of these barriers, and urge more intervention research to explore means for removing them.
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