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Diane E. Watson, Steve Slade, Lynda Buske, and Joshua Tepper Intergenerational Differences In Workloads Among Primary Care Physicians: A Ten-Year, Population-Based Study Health Affairs, November/December 2006; 25(6): 1620-1628. [Abstract] [Full Text] [Figures Only] [PDF] [Reprints & Permissions]

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Intergenerational Differences in Primary Care

John E. Sattenspiel, MD, FAAFP   ( 28 November 2006 )

Intergenerational Differences in Primary Care 28 November 2006
John E. Sattenspiel, MD, FAAFP, Senior Medical Director Agate Resources, Inc Send comment to journal: Re: Intergenerational Differences in Primary Care drsatt{at}lipa.net John E. Sattenspiel, MD, FAAFP	I read the article by Watson et al. with interest but wonder if their study missed some crucial explanatory data. In the study they report only on numbers of visits and hours spent as measures of physician workload. However, during my 24+ years in private practice family medicine, I have noted a significant change in the character of my work. Over the years I had noticed that while my numbers of visits had fallen, the average level of complexity in each had risen. The implication of the Watson study, therefore, may be that younger physicians, due perhaps to their more recent training, are seeing a preponderance of more complex patients while older physicians have built and maintained practices based on the less complex patients often stereotyped as the bread and butter of primary care. This shift in practice emphasis and character would certainly account for the measured results of the Watson study but unfortunately does not appear to have been examined.