Improving and maintaining preventive services. Part 1: Applying the patient path model.

Research in the past two decades has made remarkable progress in determining the variables that affect preventive care within primary care practices. The level of preventive care that a patient receives is largely determined by factors within the medical office setting. Many of these factors can be modified by physicians to encourage preventive care. An overview of these factors, presented as the Patient Path Model, can provide a framework for systematic practice evaluation. This model can be applied to almost any office setting to help identify opportunities to enhance and improve preventive care.