Primary Care Visit Regularity and Patient Outcomes: an Observational Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Regular primary care visits may allow an opportunity to deliver high-value, proactive care. However, no previous study has examined whether more temporally regular primary care visits predict better outcomes.

Objective

To examine the relationship between the temporal regularity of primary care (PC) visits and outcomes.

Design

Retrospective cohort study.

Participants

We used Medicare claims for 378,862 fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries, who received PC at 1328 federally qualified health centers from 2010 to 2014.

Main measures

We created five beneficiary groups based upon their annual number of PC visits. We further subdivided those groups according to whether PC visits occurred with more or less regularity than the median value. We compar

SUBMITTER: Rose AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6318173 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature