PRIMARY AND PREVENTIVE CARE IN A UNIVERSITY OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY GROUP-PRACTICE

OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to determine whether primary and preventive care is practiced by a university obstetrician-gynecologist group practice. STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective chart review spanning 2 years of four academic physicians' private practices was performed. A total of 335 patients were reviewed with 739 patient encounters and 1032 patient problems identified. The definition of a primary care physician according to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists was used to standardize data collection and evaluation. RESULTS: Obstetric complaints accounted for 27.7% of all visits, whereas 65.4% were for gynecologic problems. Almost 7% of all complaints were neither obstetric nor gynecologic, and of those 74.6% were primary care problems completely managed by the obstetrician-gynecologist. Only 19.7% of these were referred for management. More than 89% of all encounters (659/739) involved some element of primary care. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence that the majority of health care provided by the obstetrician-gynecologist is primary care.