Archives of internal medicine
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Comparative Study
Care for patients in the last months of life: the Belgian Sentinel Network Monitoring End-of-Life Care study.
Population-based studies monitoring end-of-life care are lacking. This study describes involvement of caregivers, access to specialist palliative care, treatment goals (cure, life-prolonging, or palliation), and content of end-of-life care (physical, psychosocial, or spiritual) in a representative sample of dying persons in Belgium. ⋯ In Belgium, most dying patients have both formal and informal caregivers. Provision of specialist palliative care is far less frequent. A transition from cure to palliation often occurs late in the dying process and sometimes not at all. Psychosocial and spiritual care is delivered considerably less frequently than physical care.
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Most Americans report having a usual source of medical care, but many also report significant barriers to timely access to such care. This can lead patients to use the emergency department (ED) as a ready alternative to their usual source of medical care, even when such care could be provided more cost-effectively in a primary care setting. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between ED visits and perceived barriers to receiving timely primary care. ⋯ The benefits of having a usual source of medical care are diminished by barriers that limit effective and timely access to such care. Interventions to improve effective access to medical care such as open access scheduling might have benefits not only for individual patients and practices but also for health policy related to cost-effective health care delivery systems and our need to relieve overcrowded conditions at EDs.
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The prevalence and correlates of obese individuals who are resistant to the development of the adiposity-associated cardiometabolic abnormalities and normal-weight individuals who display cardiometabolic risk factor clustering are not well known. ⋯ Among US adults, there is a high prevalence of clustering of cardiometabolic abnormalities among normal-weight individuals and a high prevalence of overweight and obese individuals who are metabolically healthy. Further study into the physiologic mechanisms underlying these different phenotypes and their impact on health is needed.