The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of employing "physicians' assistants" in delivering primary medical care. It seeks to identify the optimal role of paramedical personnel and to assess the impact of efficient delegation of tasks on the productivity of the physician, his...

This paper presents an activity analysis model of primary medical care which, through the use of integer constraints, captures both the technology of ambulatory care and the institutional restriction that labor inputs must be employed in discrete units. The result is that staffing patterns and...