Annals of Family Medicine: New Studies Tie Long-Term Primary Care Relationships to Fewer Acute Hospitalizations and Deeper Physician Trust

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Dec. 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Two new studies published in Annals of Family Medicine highlight the importance of long-term relationships between patients and their primary care physicians. One study links higher continuity of care to fewer acute, potentially preventable hospitalizations, while another explores how family physicians' trust in patients develops — and what can challenge it.

Continuity of care — the degree to which patients consistently see the same primary care physician — is a cornerstone of family medicine. In a new study examining how continuity of care relates to the types of hospitalizations people experience, researchers analyzed data from 54,376 adults age 45 and older in New South Wales, Australia, linking 11 years of claims data and hospital records. The researchers focused on acute potentially preventable hospitalizations — a group of 10 conditions defined in Australia's National Healthcare Agreement as likely avoidable with timely, effective primary care, such as urinary tract infections and ear, nose and throat infections. These acute hospitalizations were contrasted with a nonacute potentially preventable hospitalization category that included vaccine-preventable and chronic-condition-related admissions.

Using a double machine learning framework with multiple models, the researchers observed that patients with stronger continuity had a lower probability of acute, potentially preventable hospitalizations compared with the nonacute category. These findings suggest that even sudden, acute problems may be less likely to end in a hospital admission when people see the same physician consistently. For example, when continuity increased from the 45th to the 50th percentile, the probability that a potentially preventable hospitalization was for an acute condition rather than a nonacute one decreased by an estimated 9.8 percent to 23.5 percent, depending on the machine learning model used.

Another qualitative study in Annals of Family Medicine examined how general practitioners experience trust in their patients. Through semistructured interviews with 25 general practitioners, researchers identified three themes: physicians often begin by assuming trust in patients; trust deepens over time as part of a mutual, trusting therapeutic relationship; and trust can be strained when patients are perceived as manipulating the relationship for secondary gain, making the interaction feel transactional.

Together, the studies reinforce that building ongoing, trusting relationships with a regular primary care physician can improve care and reduce avoidable hospital use.

Articles Cited:

Continuity of Primary Care and Preventable Hospitalization for Acute Conditions: A Machine Learning-Based Record Linkage Study

Ngoc Mai Phuong Nguyen, MPH, MHLM; Bijan J. Borah, PhD; Margo Barr, PhD; Ben Harris-Roxas, PhD; and Anurag Sharma, PhD

General Practitioners' Trust in Their Patients: A Qualitative Study

Kerry Uebel, PhD, BScMed, MBBS, MFamMed; Faith R. Yong, PhD, BPharm(Hons), MPS, AcSHP, MSHP; Maria Agaliotis, PhD, MPH, BSocSci, BNurs; Thanya Pathirana, PhD, MPH, MBBS; John D. T. Nguyen, BMed, MD; Christopher Chan; Alexandra Hawkey, PhD, MPH; Sundresan Naicker, PhD; and Kylie Vuong, PhD, MIPH, MBBS

Annals of Family Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed, indexed research journal that provides a cross-disciplinary forum for new, evidence-based information affecting the primary care disciplines. Launched in May 2003, Annals of Family Medicine is sponsored by six family medical organizations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Board of Family Medicine, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, and the North American Primary Care Research Group. Annals of Family Medicine is published online six times each year, charges no fee for publication, and contains original research from the clinical, biomedical, social, and health services areas, as well as contributions on methodology and theory, selected reviews, essays, and editorials. Complete editorial content and interactive discussion groups for each published article can be accessed for free on the journal's website, www.AnnFamMed.org.

SOURCE Annals of Family Medicine