Managing patient populations in primary care: points of leverage.

Common "quality" metrics may represent the quality of care for large populations; however, they do not adequately represent quality in individual primary care settings, especially as stand-alone indices. Using discreet threshold values to measure quality in primary care may result in physicians focusing on managing patients by the numbers at the expense of making individualized and nuanced clinical decisions. Current performance measures may be misapplied as proxies for both cost savings and quality.

A consensus statement on empiric therapy for suspected gram-positive infections in surgical patients.

Background: Multidrug resistance among gram-positive pathogens in tertiary and other care centers is common. A systematic decision pathway to help select empiric antibiotic therapy for suspected gram-positive postsurgical infections is presented.

Data Sources: A Medline search with regard to empiric antibiotic therapy was performed and assessed by the 15-member expert panel.