Left by a trusted physician and colleague: Impacts of primary care physician exits in a group practice system

Lina Maria Ellegård, Gustav Kjellsson and Daniel Monsees

No 1192, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: Disruptions of the patient-general practitioner (GP) relationship due to GP exits affect patient outcomes in various ways. The literature suggests that the loss of a trusted professional can have negative effects, but also points at the benefits of being examined by a new GP. We study the impact of GP exits in the Swedish primary care setting, in which care is provided in group practices and even those patients who have a main GP usually see different GPs. Since the practice is responsible for organizing a replacement GP after an exit, we expect the transition between GPs to be relatively smooth for patients. Using two different control groups we are able to separate the effects of being affected by the loss of ones main GP from the reduction of a practices' workforce. Our results show that GP exits have a negligible effect on patients health care utilization in the Swedish setting. We do observe some shifts in health care utilization patterns, however, this is not driven by the loss of the main GP but rather practice level disruptions. These findings suggest that in organizational settings such as in Sweden - where continuity of care is maintained at practice rather than GP level - patient outcomes are less dependent on individual GPs. Importantly, this conclusion holds even for patients with high baseline continuity of care.

JEL-codes: I11 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/337452/1/1961773597.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:337452

DOI: 10.4419/96973377

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().