1 Department of Health and Hospitals, 818 Harrison Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02118
2 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Bronx, New York 10461
The paper by Starfield et al.1 presents useful and interesting data about medical care utilization in a sample of Baltimore children, but it fails to address itself to the question posed in its title.
The paper examines several important attributes (type of provider, accessibility, and financial requirement) of the patients' regular sources of care. It also includes data about the regularity with which those sources are actually used. However, there are no data or tables which specifically show the relationship between regularity of use and the other attributes studies.