No change in physician dictation patterns when visit notes are made available online for patients.

Objective: To determine whether physicians document office visits differently when they know their patients have easy, online access to visit notes.

Patients And Methods: We conducted a natural experiment with a pre-post design and a nonrandomized control group. The setting was a multispecialty group practice in Minnesota.

Smoking-related attitudes and clinical practices of medical personnel in Minnesota.

Context: Effective clinic-based, smoking-cessation activities are not widely implemented.

Objective: To compare and contrast the smoking-cessation attitudes and clinical practices of five types of primary healthcare team members.

Design And Setting: From July to October 2002, a cross-sectional survey was mailed to randomly selected primary care physicians (MDs), advanced practice nurses (APRNs), registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and medical assistants (MAs).

Early experience with employee choice of consumer-directed health plans and satisfaction with enrollment.

Objective: To assess the initial impact of offering consumer-defined health plan (CDHP) options on employees.

Data Sources/study Setting: A mail survey of 4,680 employees in the corporate offices of Humana Inc. in June 2001.

Patients' interest in reading their medical record: relation with clinical and sociodemographic characteristics and patients' approach to health care.

Background: Although opportunities for patients to review their medical records are increasing, nothing is known about which patients want to take advantage of those opportunities. The objective of this study was to determine the proportion and characteristics of patients who are very interested in examining their clinic medical record and the reasons for their interest.

Methods: Cross-sectional, mailed survey (conducted in May 2001) to a random sample of 4500 adults who had a recent clinic visit.

Which enrollees bypass their gatekeepers in a point-of-service plan?

Background And Objectives: Like Health Maintenance Organizations, point-of-service (POS) health plans use primary care gatekeepers, and they permit self-referral to specialists at increased costs to the enrollee. The main objective of this study was to contrast patients who self-referred with those referred by their primary care physician.

Research Design: We conducted a cross-sectional telephone survey of 606 recent users of specialists in a large Midwestern POS health plan; response rate was 65%.

Consumer response to a report card comparing healthcare systems.

Objective: Report cards to date have focused on quality of care in health plans rather than within healthcare delivery systems. The purpose of this study was to evaluate consumer response to the first healthcare system-level report card.

Study Design: Qualitative assessment of consumer response.

Quality of life after postmastectomy breast reconstruction.

Purpose/objectives: To explore women's expectations about postmastectomy reconstruction and factors affecting their quality of life after reconstruction.

Design: Qualitative focus group study.

Setting: Integrated healthcare system in a midwestern suburban community.