Ambulatory Care at the Good Samaritan Medical Center

A recommendation that Good Samaritan Hospital provide nonemergency outpatient care without clinics by intermixing the nonprivate patients with the private patients of physicians in the planned Medical Center. New patients would be assigned to available doctors by a centralized referral service keeping track of all appointments. Interns and residents would provide care under supervision of senior physicians in the latter's offices. This plan eliminates the normal defects of outpatient clinics--long waiting, unpleasant atmosphere, lack of continuity of care, and overhead costs three times those of physicians in private practice--and frees the emergency room of the large and increasing load of nonemergency cases. Of 30 Good Samaritan staff physicians, 80 percent expressed willingness to participate. Many, especially internists, insist on retaining control over laboratory procedures if they join the Medical Center. (November 1970)