Otolaryngology Needs in a Free Clinic Providing Indigent Care.

Objectives/hypothesis: To determine the otolaryngology needs in a free clinic providing care to medically indigent patients, as perceived by the patients and health care providers.

Study Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Methods: A survey was administered to patients and health care providers of a free clinic from September 2014 through January 2015 in an urban, inner-city location.

Opportunities and challenges in educating community-responsive physicians.

Medical educators, funders, and policy makers are placing greater emphasis on educating physicians-in-training to provide community-responsive care and to participate in community-focused health-promotion and disease-prevention efforts. The MCP [symbol: see text] Hahnemann School of Medicine requires all first-year students to work in the community on projects involving health education, needs and resource assessment, advocacy, outreach, and other community health skills. The Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at MCP [symbol: see text] Hahnemann directs these required courses, as well as other elective programs that provide students the opportunity to develop community health competencies.

The adequacy of screening, documenting, and treating the diseases of substance abuse.

In a large inner-city teaching hospital, only 28 percent of over 1000 consecutive hospital admissions received proper screening for diseases of substance abuse. Although the CAGE questions are currently considered the best screening test for quickly assessing an alcohol abuse history, not a single CAGE question was documented during our 23 day study. Of the 1010 patients in the study, 160 or 16% were found to be substance abusers.