Pilot Study of Medical Practices in Medical Arts Buildings

Abstract

PRIVATE MEDICAL practice in the United States appears to be changing. It has been suggested that concurrent alterations are occurring in both the organization and location of medical practice. Underlying both changes, it seems, are fundamental transformations in the role of the private practitioner. Several observers have delineated the nature of the changes'as follows. 1. The practicing physician is abandoning his home as the primary site of office practice and relocating in a medical arts building or similar location, indicating that a centralization of medical practice is taking place (1-4). 2. The organization of medical practice is shifting from a relatively simple structure to one more complex in nature (3, 5-7). 3. Growth in the number and types of specialties and subspecialties suggests that different organization structures and locations of office practice may exist to accommodate the needs of various types of specialists (5, 8-16). It is difficult to assess objectively those apparent changes in medical practice because of the paucity of data resulting from systematic study. Freidson and Rhea (17), in evaluating t,his situation, wrote: