Yale Studies in Ambulatory Medical Care

THE outpatient services of teaching hospitals in the United States present, at this juncture of history, a series of interlocking contradictions. These flow directly from cumulative changes in the economics and organization of modern society and of modern medicine. The resulting dilemma confronts all who are concerned with patients and students in the medical center.The antecedents of the outpatient clinic go back to an earlier time than those of rational medicine. Public dispensaries for the needy, staffed by state-employed physicians, were established in Egypt during the eleventh century B.C. The direct historical heritage is, however, that of the "poor . . .