Perspective 2022PE-03

More than one million “orphan” patients do not have a family physician in Quebec as revealed by the department of Health and Social Services scoreboard. Having access to a regular source of care is almost universally seen as a good thing. In this short note, Erin C. Strumpf, McGill Professor and Fellow CIRANO, and co-authors challenge this idea. They show that there is a tendency to confuse concepts and assume that repeated contact is evidence of a truly caring, trusting patient-physician relationship, which could ultimately lead to better health outcomes.

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