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July 21st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda FRIDAY, July 20 (HealthDay News) — U.S. doctors tend to share
patients with colleagues who have similar personal and practice styles,
according to a new study.
The findings are from a Harvard Medical School study that looked at
informal patient-sharing networks among doctors across the country. The
researchers used 2006 data from nearly 4.6 million Medicare patients seen
by more than 68,000 doctors in 51 urban and rural hospital referral
regions.
The study was published in the July 18 issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
There was substantial variation between the doctors’ informal sharing
networks. The number of doctors included in a network ranged from 135 in
Minot, N.D., to nearly 8,200 in Boston. The average number of other
doctors each doctor was connected to per 100 Medicare patients was
27.3.
Doctors were far more likely to have connections with doctors based at
the same hospital than those based at different hospitals. Connected
doctors also were much more likely to be in close geographic proximity:
The average distance for connected doctors was 13.1 miles, compared to 24
miles for unconnected doctors.
The researchers also found that patient characteristics such as race,
age and health conditions were more similar among connected doctors than
among unconnected doctors.
“It has long been known that physician behavior varies across
geographic areas, yet our understanding of the factors that contribute to
these geographic differences is incomplete,” Dr. Bruce Landon, professor
of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a
journal news release. “Our findings suggest that variation according to
network attribute might help explain health-care variation across
geographic areas, particularly given what is known about how networks
function.”
Strong connections among doctors — as well as among doctors, nurses
and administrators — can create trust and shared values that improve
health care for patients, Valerie Lewis and Dr. Elliott Fisher, both
professors at Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine in Hanover,
N.H., wrote in an accompanying editorial.
More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians offers tips for choosing a family doctor.
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