[The physician and his poor patient--time for change].

Poverty and inequality will become increasingly part of the physician's realm of work. They have an impact on mortality, morbidity and on quality of life. Research has shown that physicians relate differently to poor patients, especially in relation to prescribing, but also in relation to referrals and during the consultation.

Health care for the poor--an exploration of primary-care physicians' perceptions of poor patients and of their helping behaviors.

This paper explores the ways in which primary-care physicians in Israel perceive and help poor patients. Our findings are based on a qualitative study that utilized a focus group and in-depth interviews with 16 primary-care physicians who qualified both in Israel and in the former Soviet Union, and who work in community clinics one Health Maintenance Organization serving poor populations of diverse cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds (immigrants from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia, Bedouin, ultra-orthodox Jews, the chronic poor, and the 'new' poor). It was found that the physicians presume causality between poverty and health, identify and distinguish between different types of poverty, and make associations based on the type of poverty and type of patient problem.

Systematic Inventive Thinking: a new tool for the analysis of complex problems in medical management.

The complexity of medical problems is a well-recognized phenomenon. In the presence of economic and cultural restrictions, medical decision-making can be particularly challenging. This paper outlines a system of analysis and decision-making for solving such problems, and briefly describes a case study in which the method was used to analyze the case of antibiotic overprescribing in a large health maintenance organization.