PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

R H Mugge

Publications and source records attributed to R H Mugge.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1986

Visits to selected health care practitioners: United States, 1980.

This report, based on data from the 1980 National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey, presents statistical estimates on visits to different types of practitioners by the noninstitutionalized civilian population of the United States. The report does not include dental visits, telephone visits, emergency room visits, or visits in which a physician was also seen. The practitioners whose visits are reported vary from the highly independent practitioners with doctorate degrees (opticians, chiropractors, podiatrists, and many psychologists); to the nurses, paramedics, social workers, and counselors who often provide services less independently; to the physical therapists and the laboratory, radiology, and other technicians who largely provide services under physician prescriptions or on teams headed by physicians. In general it was found that the most independent practitioners (optometrists, chiropractors, and podiatrists) tended most to provide services in their own facilities and to be paid directly by the patients or their families. Persons who visited technicians and physical therapists almost invariably saw a physician at least once during the year. Physicians were visited by 70.8 percent of the population. Persons seeing physicians averaged 4.5 visits to them during the year. There were nearly twice as many physician visits--by the survey's definition--than there were visits to all of the other types of practitioners reported on here. Nearly three-fourths of the physician visits took place in the doctors' offices, and about one-twentieth in doctors' clinics. The patient or the patient's family paid 40 percent of the charges for physician visits, and insurance and prepayment plans paid another 30 percent. Each of the remaining practitioner types is compared with all others and with physicians in terms of particular features of their practices. Following are some of the more notable findings for the respective practitioners: Nurses made more visits to the home than any other practitioner type. They also accounted for more clinic visits. More than half of the nurse visits for specific problems involved respiratory or circulatory diseases. Visits to nurses were the least expensive kind of visits reported. Most people who saw optometrists saw them only once or twice during the year. Optometry visits usually took place in the optometrist's office and usually involved eye examinations for glasses. The average visit was expensive, partly because it often included the cost of the eyeglasses. People who saw chiropractors tended to see them often during the year. Visits were usually in the chiropractor's office or clinic. The problems presented to chiropractors most often involved musculoskeletal diseases or injuries.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Allied Health Personnel↗
PubMed1986

Health care visits with nurses by place of visit: United States, 1980.

In this report, based on the National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey of 1980, the National Center for Health Statistics presents statistical estimates on health care visits--and on the people who had such visits--with nurses and on places visited by the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States. The report does not include telephone visits, emergency room visits, visits in which a physician was also seen, or visits in dental offices and clinics. The report also excludes all services provided to patients in hospitals or nursing homes. In general, the subject of this report may be described as ambulatory services provided independently by nurses in the course of patient visits. The nurse visits and the visiting patients are reported here according to where the visits took place--in doctors' offices or group practices, doctors' clinics, neighborhood or family health centers, company clinics, school clinics, other clinics, patients' homes, laboratories, hospital outpatient departments, other places, and unknown places. Indications are that nurse visits in these places are greatly outnumbered by nurse visits in institutions and in situations where the doctor is included in the visit; nevertheless, a very extensive set of nurses' services are accounted for in this report, and the data on circumstances of visits and characteristics of clients by place of visit are both meaningful and useful. Data on nurse visits in each type of place are compared with the total nurse visits in all types of places. Highlights of these findings are as follows: Persons having nurse visits in doctors' offices or group practices tended to be older than the average nurse patients. Most were white persons; relatively few were black. A large proportion of those 17 years of age and over were married. Family incomes tended to be above average. Charges for the visits were lower than average for nurse visits. The patient or the patient's family paid for about one-half of the charges. Persons having nurse visits in doctors' clinics shared similar characteristics with persons having nurse visits in doctors' offices. One difference is that payment for services in doctors' clinics is less likely to come from the patient or the patient's family. Nearly 44 percent of the clinic visits were in the North Central Region. Persons having nurse visits in neighborhood and family health centers tended to be quite young. They had relatively low educational and family income levels. They tended to live in the South and in rural, nonmetropolitan areas. Persons with visits in these centers averaged only 2.7 such visits during the year.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Age Factors↗
PubMed1984

Issues in protecting confidentiality in national health statistics.

This paper reviews the confidentiality policies of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). It relates these both to the 1974 Privacy Act and to the needs of users of health statistics. The four major issues considered in the paper are: (1) the implications of present confidentiality laws with respect to NCHS, (2) the issue of gaining informed consent in telephone interviews, (3) questions concerning the release of NCHS information on public use data tapes, (4) the implications for NCHS policies of the recently proposed legislation on the confidentiality of federal statistical records.

Confidentiality↗
PubMed1984

Persons receiving care from selected health care practitioners: United States, 1980.

In the household survey phase of the National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey of 1980, a survey was made of 17,123 persons who made up a representative sample of the civilian population in the United States not residing in institutions. Through repeated interviews the survey obtained information on the health conditions of these people, the health care services they received in 1980, the costs of these services, and the arrangements made for paying for the services. This report, one of a series of reports on the knowledge gained through the survey, is on the people who received services during the year from nurses, optometrists, podiatrists, psychologists, paramedics, physical therapists, social workers and counselors, laboratory technicians, radiologic technicians, other technicians, and all other practitioners; thus, this report is on people receiving services from the various types of practitioners other than physicians and dentists. In addition to excluding the military and persons living in nursing homes and other institutions, the report excludes people receiving nonphysician and nondentist services if they were only received in the same visit in which a physician or dentist was seen, if they were received in an emergency room, or if they were received while the person was an inpatient in a hospital. More than one-third of the nation's population had one or more such visits with practitioners other than physicians and dentists in 1980, according to estimates from the National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey. Approximately 1 person out of every 8 had a visit with a nurse; about 1 person of every 11 visited an optometrist during the year; 1 of 15 visited a lab technician; 1 of 25 visited a chiropractor; 1 of 37 visited a radiologic technician; and 1 of every 50 visited a podiatrist. Psychologists, paramedics, and physical therapists were each visited by about 1 percent of the population. People varied in their likelihood of seeing the various types of practitioners, depending on their personal characteristics, the condition of their health, and where they lived: In general, the practitioners were more likely to have been visited at least once during the year by women than by men, whites than by blacks or other races, non-Hispanics than by Hispanics, the old than by the young, those with more education than by those with less, those with poor health, those with activity limitations, and those living outside the South. There was little relationship, in general, between level of income and visiting a practitioner.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Age Factors↗
PubMed1980

Household health interviews and minority health: the NCHS perspective.

Efforts to identify information needs in the area of minority health have been paralleled by efforts within the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) both to improve the quantity and quality of minority health statistics and to increase the accessibility of these statistics to data users. This paper describes the context in which these objectives are pursued within NCHS. The paper also discusses problem areas which may confound the development and usefulness of minority health statistics derived from general-purpose, household interview surveys designed to produce descriptive estimates of morbidity and health services utilization at the national level. Developments within NCHS related to some of these problem areas are highlighted.

Government Agencies↗