Epidemiology and practice management: an example of community-oriented primary care.

Community-oriented primary care (COPC) has been described as an application of the principles of epidemiology to the practice of primary care. Yet further development of COPC practice within family practice has been hampered by difficulties in defining a target population that can be addressed in the variety of practice settings typical of family practice. This paper describes the application within a residency practice of the principles of COPC to the practice population, consisting of all members of the households of active patients. The results suggest that this approach is feasible, applicable in virtually any practice setting, and likely to reveal a large number of health and health care problems that can be remedied but that might otherwise have been unnoticed. The implications of this approach to COPC on the practice and training of family physicians are discussed.