Diagnoses, demographics, and utilization of care as encountered by three US Navy general medical officers

U.S. Navy general medical officers (GMOs) are physicians serving as general practitioners. Although exceptions exist, most GMOs are not board-certifie d in a specialty. They are postgraduate year 1 (PGY-1)-trained, state-licen sed physicians analogous to civilian general practitioners. We conducted a retrospective study using data generated from patient visits with active du ty males and females from June 1 to 30, 1998, to describe diagnoses, demogr aphics, and utilization of care patterns encountered by three PGY-1-trained GMOs at an ambulatory clinic. A total of 781 patient encounters with 123 d iagnoses from a patient population of 3,178 were recorded. This is an avera ge of 260 patient encounters per GMO, at a rate of 2.52 patients seen per p atient-care hour. Fifty-seven consultations/referrals were requested (7.3% of encounters, 1.8% of the patient population). Personnel assigned to the c linic accounted for 4.2% of visits (2% of the patient population). Patient satisfaction was rated as "excellent" to "satisfactory, and no significant morbidity was observed at 1.5-year follow-up. With PGY-1 training, GMOs pro vide primary care to a substantial volume of prescreened patients and treat patients with a majority of diagnoses without referral or unacceptable com plications. The role of GMOs, and perhaps other physicians without specialt y training (i.e., general practitioners), in selected settings seems valid and may have advantageous medicoeconomic implications for military and civi lian managed care systems.