Primary Care Attributes and Mortality: A National Person-Level Study

The Article in Brief

Anthony Jerant, and colleagues

Background Are attributes of primary care related to patient mortality? This study examines whether patient-reported access to the primary care attributes of comprehensiveness, patient-centeredness, and enhanced access to care is associated with lower individual mortality risk.

What This Study Found Patients who report greater access to comprehensiveness, patient-centeredness, and enhanced access to care have lower mortality, a finding which strongly supports the ongoing patient-centered medical home health care redesign efforts in the United States. Based on nationally representative data on 52,241 patients aged 18 to 90 years, patients' primary care attribute scores (which measure the degree to which patients' usual source of care have the 3 primary care attributes) were inversely associated with mortality.

Implications

• Ongoing health care and primary care practice redesign efforts in the United States may have the potential to reduce preventable deaths, according to the study's findings.
• These findings complement and expand upon those of prior studies, which found lower mortality rates in geographical areas with more primary care clinicians. By comparison, this study suggests a mortality benefit for individual patients resulting from greater access to particular primary care attributes.