Does a residents' continuity clinic provide primary care?
M. E. Wilson, J. P. Weiner, J. C. Bender, S. K. Bergstrom and B. H. Starfield
Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md.
Pediatric residents are required to care for a group of children over a
period of time. For many, this "continuity" experience is in a hospital
outpatient department that may or may not provide primary care. We applied
a measure of primary care to the Primary Care Clinic, the continuity clinic
at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md, and found that it compared
favorably with private pediatric practices in the Baltimore area, providing
significantly more "principal care" (93% vs. 84.5% of encounters), and to
the Harris Lane Home walk-in clinic, where only 51% of encounters were
"principal care". The Primary Care Clinic scored higher on a primary care
index, a measure of the extent to which the facility serves as a primary
care source for patients, suggesting that hospital-based training can
provide residents with an opportunity to provide primary care.
