ArticleAnnals of family medicine
Health Care Utilization After a Visit to a Within-Group Family Physician vs a Walk-In Clinic Physician.
Article in Annals of family medicine. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Patient Preparation in Walk-in Clinics Through the Implementation of a Consultation Preparation Sheet: Qualitative Study.Journal of participatory medicine · 2026Article
- Association between continuity of care and detection of hypertension in Dutch general practice: a 10-year cohort study.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Aligning the policy-created gardens of Canadian primary health care: Toward a new access landscape.Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien · 2026Article
- General practitioners' acceptability to handle unscheduled visits: a french nationwide cross-sectional survey.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- Impact of changes in primary care attachment: a scoping review.Family medicine and community health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
19 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposePrimary care access is a key health system metric, but little research has compared models to provide primary care access when one's regular physician is not available. We compared health system use after a visit with a patient's own family physician group (ie, within-group physician who was not the patient's primary physician) vs a visit with a walk-in clinic physician who was not part of the patient's family physician group.
methodsWe conducted a population-based, retrospective cohort study using administrative data from Ontario, Canada, including all individuals formally enrolled with a family physician, from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020. We compared those visiting within-group physicians to those visiting walk-in clinic physicians using propensity score matching to account for differences in patient characteristics. The primary outcome was any emergency department visit within 7 days of the initial visit.
resultsMatched patients who visited a within-group physician (N = 506,033) were 10% less likely to visit an emergency department in the 7 days after the initial visit compared to patients who saw a walk-in clinic physician (N = 506,033; 20,117 [4.0%] vs 22,320 [4.4%]; risk difference [RD] 0.4%; 95% CI 0.4-0.5; relative risk [RR] 0.90; 95% CI, 0.89-0.92). Restricting to visits occurring on weekends, the observed association was stronger (7,964 [3.7%] vs 10,055 [4.7%]; RD 1.0%; 95% CI 0.9-1.1; RR 0.79; 95% CI, 0.77-0.82). Those accessing after-hours within-group physician visits were more likely to have ≥1 additional virtual or in-person within-group physician visit within 7 days (virtual RR 1.86, in-person RR 1.87).
conclusionsCompared to visiting a walk-in clinic physician, seeing a within-group physician after hours might decrease downstream emergency department visits. This finding could be explained by better continuity of care and can inform primary care service models and the policies that support them.
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