The physicians' settings were primary care practices (79.0% of evaluable patients, n = 323/409), referral practices (4.2%), and outpatient clinics (16.9%).
The physicians' settings were primary care practices (87.5% of patients, n = 426/487), referral practices (8.4%), and outpatient clinics (4.1%).
All ambulatory care visits of office-based physicians were randomly sampled from physician practice settings across the country.
Billing data collected in hospital and physician office settings typically do not include lot numbers [ 44]; therefore, lot numbers have no utility with respect to AS.
In particular, we were able to extend the CA Framework to EMRs in physician office settings by identifying specific micro, meso and macro level factors that influence EMR adoption and its effect.
The response rate would also appear satisfactory considering prevailing challenges to web-based surveys especially among busy physicians in settings with limited internet connectivity.
Skilling up physicians across settings in expert palliative techniques is also endorsed by Palliative Care Australia [ 57] yet, as evidenced by the present study, any such effort has not been successfully implemented.
Systematic reviews of disease management for COPD patients emphasise the need for well-designed, practical multicenter trials [ 22, 23], including broad representative patient samples [ 24], with a wide range of physicians and settings to improve external validity [ 23].
Indeed, the issue of skilling up physicians across settings, or at least increasing access to specialist palliative expertise, is an important challenge and intensivists like Andrew acknowledge that: "some of us are better at titrating than others".
When asked to comment on the conceptual design of the tool during the focus group sessions, the conflicting barriers and facilitators that were identified for the osteoporosis tool clearly exposed the complexity of family physicians' practice settings and their widely differing practice workflows.
