Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, a national correspondent for The New England Journal of Medicine, recently highlighted the research of SHP’s Adrienne Sabety, PhD, in an essay about what happens when elderly patients lose that close relationship with their primary care physician (PCP.)

Sabety, an assistant professor of health policy, watched what happened when her grandmother’s longtime primary care physician (PCP) retired, inspiring the health economist to ask whether the value of a PCP relationship could be measured. Her study published in the Journal of Public Economics showed that when patients lose a primary care physician, they turn more to specialists, but still experience higher mortality, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations in the following year—adding roughly $46,000 in Medicare costs for every departing PCP. The harms are greatest for patients who had longer relationships with a primary care physician, underscoring the measurable health benefits of continuity in primary care.

Read the Full Essay Here