This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

C. Franklin Church, MD
Raleigh (NC) Family Physicians, Inc

JAMA. 1992;267(21):2894.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor

—As my grandfather used to say, "liars figure and figures lie." Though I wish to impune neither JAMA nor Dr Maloney, I question his analytic assumptions and conclusions¹ based on data reported in Medical Economics.² Although Maloney himself equivocates regarding "the small sample size, incomplete coverage of specialties and the use of external data sources," his conclusions fail to reflect the issues of most concern to those who have considered both the problem and the solution.

Crane's data³ concerning work hours are simply not credible. An example: a family physician in 10 minutes of careful history-taking and examination makes the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. This encounter is reimbursed at the rate of $50. This physician's overhead is 50%. The patient is then referred to a general surgeon who removes the appendix and is paid $500 with no overhead. Therefore, the family physician would have . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?