Patients' Perceived Quality of Family Physicians' Primary Care with or without 'Family Medicine' in the Clinic Name.
BACKGROUND
Patients' perspectives of family medicine according to the physician's identity and role as a primary-care specialist need to be investigated. This study was conducted to investigate the perceived quality of the primary care of family medicine clinics as assessed by patients in a community setting.


METHODS
Patients (or their guardians) visiting nine community family medicine clinics were surveyed using the Korean Primary Care Assessment Tool from April 2014 to June 2014. The scores of the Korean Primary Care Assessment Tool domains were compared according to the clinics' designation (or not) as 'family medicine' and the patients' recognition (or not) of the physicians as board-certified family medicine specialists.


RESULTS
A total of 196 subjects responded to the questionnaire. They assessed the community clinics' quality of primary care as moderate to high. Of the clinics, those that were not designated as family medicine scored higher than those that were designated as family medicine (P<0.05). The group of patients that recognized a clinic as that of a board-certified family medicine specialist awarded higher scores than the non-recognition group in the domains of coordination function and personalized care (P<0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
The moderate to high scores for the community family medicine clinics' quality of primary care are encouraging. It seems that patients' recognition of the family physician's role and of the physician-patient relationship has a significant influence on their assessment of the quality of primary care.
Department of Family Medicine, Dankook University College of Medicine, Cheonan, Korea.
Ka Young
KY
Kim
Department of Family Medicine, Dankook University College of Medicine, Cheonan, Korea.
Kangjin
K
Lim
Department of Family Medicine, Dankook University College of Medicine, Cheonan, Korea.
Eal Whan
EW
Park
Department of Family Medicine, Dankook University College of Medicine, Cheonan, Korea.
Eun Young
EY
Choi
Department of Family Medicine, Dankook University College of Medicine, Cheonan, Korea.
Yoo Seock
YS
Cheong
Family Practice; Physicians; Primary Health Care; Quality of Health Care
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