Primary care physicians exiting the workforce leads to their former patients receiving less primary health care, says a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine by department of health care policy postdoctoral research fellow Adrienne H. Sabety, PhD, Ruth L. Newhouse Associate Professor of Health Care Policy Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, and assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Michael L. Barnett, PhD.

Examining Medicare claims for beneficiaries whose primary care physician left the workforce between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2017, the study found that these patients had 18.4% less inpatient primary care visits than beneficiaries whose primary care physician remained active. After the loss of their primary care physician, the beneficiaries experienced 6.2% more specialty care visits, 17.8% more urgent care visits, and 3.15% more emergency department visits. The increase in these specialized and urgent visits led to greater yearly spending.

The shift from primary care to more specialized care was most pronounced in patients whose primary care physician functioned in a solitary practice without colleagues for the patients to transfer to after their exit. The reduced use of primary care persisted for two years after the loss of the primary care physician, suggesting that the loss of a primary care physician can not only diminish a patients’ immediate health outcomes, but their future engagement with primary care as well.