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Racial-ethnic minorities receive lower quality and intensity of health care compared with whites across a wide range of preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic services and disease entities. These disparities in health care contribute to continuing racial-ethnic disparities in the burden of illness and death. Several national medical organizations and the Institute of Medicine have issued position papers and recommendations for the elimination of health care disparities. However, physicians in practice are often at a loss for how to translate these principles and recommendations into specific interventions in their own clinical practices. This paper serves as a blueprint for translating principles for the elimination of racial-ethnic disparities in health care into specific actions that are relevant for individual clinical practices. We describe what is known about reducing racial-ethnic disparities in clinical practice and make recommendations for how clinician leaders can apply this evidence to transform their own practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The objective of this paper was to describe primary care prescribers' perspectives on electronic prescribing drug alerts at the point of prescribing.Design: We used a mixed-method study which included clinician surveys (web-based and paper) and focus groups with prescribers and staff.Participants: Prescribers (n = 157) working in one of 64 practices using 1 of 6 e-prescribing technologies in 6 US states completed the quantitative survey and 276 prescribers and staff participated in focus groups.Measurements: The study measures self-reported frequency of overriding of drug alerts; open-ended responses to: "What do you think of the drug alerts your software generates for you?"Results: More than 40% of prescribers indicated they override drug-drug interactions most of the time or always (range by e-prescribing system, 25% to 50%). Participants indicated that the software and the interaction alerts were beneficial to patient safety and valued seeing drug-drug interactions for medications prescribed by others. However, they noted that alerts are too sensitive and often unnecessary. Participant suggestions included: (1) run drug alerts on an active medication list and (2) allow prescribers to set the threshold for severity of alerts.Conclusions: Primary care prescribers recognize the patient safety value of drug prescribing alerts embedded within electronic prescribing software. Improvements to increase specificity and reduce alert overload are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Religiously affiliated hospitals provide nearly 20% of US beds, and many prohibit certain end-of-life and reproductive health treatments. Little is known about physician experiences in religious institutions.Objective: Assess primary care physicians' experiences and beliefs regarding conflict with religious hospital policies for patient care.Design: Cross-sectional survey.Participants: General internists, family physicians, and general practitioners from the AMA Masterfile.Main Measures: In a questionnaire mailed in 2007, we asked physicians whether they had worked in a religiously affiliated hospital or practice, whether they had experienced conflict with the institution over religiously based patient care policies and how they believed physicians should respond to such conflicts. We used chi-square and multivariate logistic regression to examine associations between physicians' demographic and religious characteristics and their responses.Key Results: Of 879 eligible physicians, 446 (51%) responded. In analyses adjusting for survey design, 43% had worked in a religiously affiliated institution. Among these, 19% had experienced conflict over religiously based policies. Most physicians (86%) believed when clinical judgment conflicts with religious hospital policy, physicians should refer patients to another institution. Compared with physicians ages 26-29 years, older physicians were less likely to have experienced conflict with religiously based policies [odds ratio (95% confidence interval) compared with 30-34 years: 0.02 (0.00-0.11); 35-46 years: 0.07 (0.01-0.72); 47-60 years: 0.02 (0.00-0.10)]. Compared with those who never attend religious services, those who do attend were less likely to have experienced conflict [attend once a month or less: odds ratio 0.06 (0.01-0.29); attend twice a month or more: 0.22 (0.05-0.98)]. Respondents with no religious affiliation were more likely than others to believe doctors should disregard religiously based policies that conflict with clinical judgment (13% vs. 3%; p = 0.005).Conclusions: Hospitals and policy-makers may need to balance the competing claims of physician autonomy and religiously based institutional policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prostate cancer screening (PCS) is controversial. Ideally, patients should understand the risks and benefits of screening before undergoing PSA testing. This study assessed whether primary care physicians routinely discuss PCS and explored the barriers to and facilitators of these discussions.Methods: Qualitative pilot study involving in-depth, semistructured interviews with 18 purposively sampled, academic and community-based primary care physicians. Barriers and facilitators of PCS discussions were ascertained using both interviews and chart-stimulated recall--a technique utilizing patient charts to probe recall and provide context to physician decision-making during clinic encounters. Analysis was performed using consensus conferences based on grounded theory techniques.Results: All 18 participating physicians reported that they generally discussed PCS with patients, though 6 reported sometimes ordering PSA tests without discussion. A PCS discussion occurred in only 16 (36%) of the 44 patient-physician encounters when patients were due for PCS that also met criteria for chart-stimulated recall. Barriers to PCS discussion were patient comorbidity, limited education/health literacy, prior refusal of care, physician forgetfulness, acute-care visits, and lack of time. Facilitators of PCS discussion included patient-requested screening, highly educated patients, family history of prostate cancer, African-American race, visits for routine physicals, review of previous PSA results, extra time during encounters, and reminder systems.Conclusions: PCS discussions sometimes do not occur. Important barriers to discussion are inadequate time for health maintenance, physician forgetfulness, and patient characteristics. Future research should explore using educational and decision support interventions to involve more patients in PCS decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]