Patients rely on their primary care doctor to be the principal point of contact for their health care needs. But how effectively are physicians overseeing their patients' care?

In 2007, the California HealthCare Foundation asked Harris Interactive to survey a representative group of California's 36,000 primary care doctors to determine how well they coordinated their patients' care across other providers and sites, and how efficiently they communicated with patients about test results and other aspects of care. Doctors from solo, small/medium, and large practice groups were included in the survey, as were Kaiser physicians.

Survey findings include:

• Some 40% of physicians reported that patients experienced problems because care wasn't well coordinated among providers and sites
• About 61% of physicians reported that their patients sometimes or often experienced long wait times for necessary tests
• Over 40% of physicians didn't have a system to receive alerts about potential drug dose or drug interaction problems

The report also found that solo practitioners may be better at coordinating care, while large health care systems, like Kaiser Permanente, are more likely to have electronic notification systems for test results and adverse drug events.

The report is available under Document Downloads.