General practice and patient characteristics associated with personal continuity: a mixed-methods study

Personal continuity of care is a core value of general practice. It is increasingly threatened by societal and healthcare changes.

To investigate the association between personal continuity and both practice and patient characteristics; and to incorporate GPs' views to enrich and validate the quantitative findings.

A mixed-methods study based on observational, routinely collected healthcare data from 269 478 patients from 48 Dutch general practices (2013-2018) and interviews with selected GPs.

First, four different personal continuity outcome measures were calculated relating to eight practice and 12 patient characteristics using multilevel linear regression analyses. Second, a thematic analysis was performed of semi-structured interviews with 10 GPs to include their views on factors contributing to personal (dis) continuity. These GPs worked at the 10 practices with the largest difference between calculated and model-estimated personal continuity.

Both a larger number of usual GPs working in a practice and a larger percentage of patient contacts with locum GPs were dose-dependently associated with lower personal continuity (highest versus lowest quartile -0.094 and -0.092, respectively, P<0.001), whereas days since registration with the general practice was dose-dependently associated with higher personal continuity (highest versus lowest quartile +0.017, P<0.001). Older age, number of chronic conditions, and contacts were also associated with higher personal continuity. The in-depth interviews identified three key themes affecting personal continuity: team composition, practice organisation, and the personal views of the GPs.

Personal continuity is associated with practice and patient characteristics. The dose-dependent associations suggest a causal relationship and, complemented by GPs' views, may provide practical targets to improve personal continuity directly.