Review of performance assessment and improvement in ambulatory medical care.

Health care plans often consider quality of care as a means of containing rising health costs. The assessment of physician and group practice performance has become increasingly widespread in ambulatory care. This article reviews the three main methods used to improve and assess performance: practice audits, peer-review groups and practice visits.

Teenagers and their family practitioner: matching between their reasons for encounter.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyse the reasons for encounter of teenagers in family practice and to compare them with the reasons recorded by their family practitioner (FP).

Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 91 FPs from the Paris area and from the French-speaking part of Belgium. The teenagers (12-17 years old) filled in an auto-administered questionnaire in the waiting room of their FP during a 1-week period.

Improving general practitioner records in France by a two-round medical audit.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: The effectiveness of clinical audits in changing the practice of health care professionals is a moot point. Methods of implementation impinge directly upon outcomes. We investigated whether a network of local opinion leaders could contribute towards a successful audit.