Continuity of care: health benefits and compensation
Continuity of care—a trusting relationship with a personal physician based on recurring interactions over time—is an essential ingredient of the secret sauce of family medicine. Numerous studies have demonstrated that higher care continuity is associated with more appropriate care and lower costs. Data also support positive effects on health outcomes. A retrospective analysis from Alberta, Canada, reported that physician and clinic continuity (seeing a clinical partner when one’s primary physician was unavailable) correlated with fewer emergency department visits across all levels of patient complexity and fewer hospitalizations for highly complex patients. A similar US cohort study of Medicare fee-for-service claims from a nationally representative sample of 4,940 medical practices found that patients with higher primary care physician continuity were 5.5% to 6.8% less likely to be hospitalized and 4.9% to 6.3% less likely to visit the emergency department. In 2023, the Accredita...