RTI uses cookies to offer you the best experience online. By clicking “accept” on this website, you opt in and you agree to the use of cookies. If you would like to know more about how RTI uses cookies and how to manage them please view our Privacy Policy here. You can “opt out” or change your mind by visiting: http://optout.aboutads.info/. Click “accept” to agree.
Although there is a general feeling that, into the early 1980s, overall improvement was occurring in the content and quality of physicians' services, no time-series documentation to date has appeared to support this assumption. This article provides empirical evidence that physicians' office visits were in fact changing over time, though not in ways that one might expect. Rather than involving more diagnostic services, such as laboratory tests and x-rays, the typical office visit had come to include more therapeutic services, especially counseling. This is consistent with the observed increase in time spent with patients: between 1974 and 1981, the average office visit increased in length by nearly one full minute. Multivariate analysis indicates that the typical office visit was changing largely because physicians themselves were changing. Not only were physicians becoming increasingly specialized, but they were also more likely to be female, in group practice, and board-certified