JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background One of the greatest challenges of modern health systems is the choice and use of resources needed to diagnose and treat patients. Medical practice variation (MPV) is a broad term which entails the differences between healthcare providers inclusive of both the overuse and underuse. In this paper we describe a three-phase research protocol examining MPV in primary care. We aim to identify the potential targets for behavioral modification interventions to reduce the variation in practice patterns and thus improve healthcare, decrease costs and prevent disparities in care. Methods The first phase will delineate the variation in primary care practice over a wide range of services and long follow-up period (2003-2017), the second will examine the three determinants of variation (i.e., patient, physician and clinic characteristics) and attempt to derive the unexplained variance. In the third phase, we will assess a novel component that might contribute to the previously unexplained variance – the physicians’ personal behavioral characteristics such as risk aversion, fear of malpractice, stress from uncertainty, empathy and burnout. Ethics Approval The study was approved by the Soroka University Medical Center Institutional Ethics Committee (0063-14-SOR).