Dr. Barnes is a family-practice doctor, and his family lives in a four-bedroom lakefront home with a white Lincoln Navigator in the garage.

"I couldn't believe that no one was observing and examining the newborn," said Dr. Lisa Baker, a family-practice doctor at the State University at Stony Brook.

"Most of them still don't believe it," said Dr. Christopher Sargent, a family-practice doctor at the clinic.

He is a volunteer in a $2.5 million federally financed study, run by a rheumatology professor and a family-practice doctor at the University of Maryland.

Benefits for the Wealthy Linda Marraccini, a family-practice doctor in South Miami, said, "Some of my Medicare patients are probably the wealthiest patients I have."

A family-practice doctor in Ohio named Daniel L. Thompson was charged in July with 64 felonies, including 17 counts of drug trafficking for providing Viagra and other prescriptions over the Internet.

But earnings of family-practice doctors rose 1 percent.

Fortunately, Ms. Stanton was referred to Dr. Stan Malinowitz, a family-practice doctor who has made about 10,000 house calls since beginning the practice six years ago.

In practical terms, she said, family-practice doctors are referring ever greater numbers of adolescent patients to specialists, rather than risk prescribing antidepressants other than Prozac.

A family-practice doctor who has been charged with illegally selling prescriptions for OxyContin, a heroinlike pain reliever, is scheduled to go on trial on Dec. 10.