J Am Board Fam Med
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Nearly every state offers loan repayment (LRP) and some offer loan forgiveness to clinicians who commit to work in safety net practices. The effectiveness of these programs from the perspective of safety net practices is largely unknown. OBJECTIVES: To assess safety net practice administrators' assessments of key outcomes for the 3 principal types of state service programs: LRPs funded by states, LRPs funded jointly by states and National Health Service Corps, and loan forgiveness programs. ⋯ Participants are perceived to practice good quality care (96.9%) and be positive contributors (92.4%). Administrators' assessments are generally similar for the 3 types of programs. CONCLUSIONS: Administrators of safety net practices generally perceive states' loan repayment and loan forgiveness programs succeed in helping them recruit and retain good clinicians.
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Family physicians who report their race as "Other" in a single best option question find the existing categories and forced choice of one category to be problematic. Our analysis of open-text responses in the "Other" race category supports a modification in the way these data are collected to provide more accurate and meaningful ways to understand the workforce and move toward more diverse, equitable, and inclusive policies in family medicine.
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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a worsening mental health crisis, while also dramatically reducing access to in-person primary care services. Primary care, an essential provider of mental health services, rapidly adopted telemedicine to address behavioral health needs. Here we examine the provision of mental health services by primary care during the pandemic, including the essential use of telemedicine. ⋯ CONCLUSIONS: Primary care is a leading provider of mental health services and has played a critical role during the pandemic. Primary care clinicians have strong relationships with their patients as well as outreach within communities that may otherwise struggle to access mental health services. The use of telemedicine in primary care, and specifically phone-based services, has been an essential tool to providing equitable access to mental health services.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Primary Care Evaluation of a Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Screening Education Intervention.
Increased screening efforts and the development of effective antiviral treatments have led to marked improvement in Hepatitis C (HCV) patient outcomes. However, many people in the US are believed to have undiagnosed HCV. Successful screening strategies and access to a coordinated system of care are critical for HCV affected adults. The objective of this study was to evaluate a primary care HCV screening education intervention that took place 2018 to 2019 to improve primary care training and management of patients after the implementation of the electronic medical record (EMR) screening alert. ⋯ This study looked at screening rates before and after an educational intervention which happened subsequent to the activation of an EMR alert. Whereas HCV EMR alerts showed an increase in HCV screenings before the education intervention, the addition of the education showed a modest increase in HCV screening rates for Baby Boomer patients.