Walk-in clinic patient characteristics and utilization patterns in Ontario, Canada: a cross-sectional study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Walk-in clinics are common in North America and are designed to provide acute episodic care without an appointment. We sought to describe a sample of walk-in clinic patients in Ontario, Canada, which is a setting with high levels of primary care attachment.

Methods

We performed a cross-sectional study using health administrative data from 2019. We compared the sociodemographic characteristics and health care utilization patterns of patients attending 1 of 72 walk-in clinics with those of the general Ontario population. We examined the subset of patients who were enrolled with a family physician and compared walk-in clinic visits to family physician visits.

Results

Our study found that 562 781 patients made 1 148 151 visits to the included walk-in clinics. M

SUBMITTER: Lapointe-Shaw L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10139081 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar-Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature