J Am Board Fam Med
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Medical assistants are core members of the primary care team, but health care organizations struggle to hire and retain them amid the ongoing exodus of health care workers as part of the "Great Resignation." To sustain a stable and engaged workforce of medical assistants, we argue that efforts to hire and retain them should focus on making their work worthwhile. Work that is worthwhile includes adequate pay, benefits, and job security, but additionally enables employees to experience a sense of contribution, growth, social connectedness, and autonomy. ⋯ We also connect these components to the work design literature to show how clinic managers and supervising clinicians can promote worthwhile work through decision-making and organizational climate. Going beyond financial compensation, these components target the latent occupational needs of medical assistants and are likely to forge employee-employer relationships that are mutually valued and sustained over time.
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Comprehensiveness is a defining principle of primary care and Family Medicine but is declining in some settings. This study explores the relationship between practice setting and comprehensiveness among family physicians (FPs). ⋯ Significant variation in FP comprehensiveness exists across different practice types. FPs in practice types commonly associated with large health systems had narrower breadth of practice, concerning amid increasing practice consolidation. Given associations between comprehensiveness and desirable health care outcomes, policy makers should encourage payment/accountability models that incentivize broader SOP.
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Primary care level close monitoring of mild COVID-19 patients has shown to provide a risk reduction in hospitalization and death. We aimed to compare the risk of all-cause death among COVID-19 ambulatory patients who received and did not receive telephonic follow-up in primary health care settings. ⋯ Our data suggest that telephonic follow-up is associated with a risk of death reduction in adult outpatients with mild COVID-19, in the context of a multimodal strategy in the primary health care settings.
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Primary care practices can help patients address obesity through weight loss; however, there are many barriers to doing so. This study examined weight management services provided and factors associated with higher reported provision of services. ⋯ Practice-associated factors such as culture and implementation climate may be worth examining to understand how to implement weight management in primary care.
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Rates of infant vitamin D supplementation fall short of guideline recommendations. We explored this discrepancy from the clinician perspective as they advise and affect this important intervention to prevent rickets. We compared infant and high-dose maternal vitamin D supplementation prescribing attitudes and practices between infant-only clinicians (IC) and clinicians who care for mothers and infants (MIC). ⋯ MIC are more likely than IC to embrace high-dose maternal vitamin D supplementation to provide adequate vitamin D for infants. This highlights an opportunity for further education of clinicians about this option.