• Lauren Lapointe-Shaw, Christine Salahub, Peter C Austin, Li Bai, Sundeep Banwatt, Simon Berthelot, R Sacha Bhatia, Cherryl Bird, Laura Desveaux, Tara Kiran, Aisha Lofters, Malcolm Maclure, Danielle Martin, Kerry A McBrien, Rita K McCracken, J Michael Paterson, Bahram Rahman, Jennifer Shuldiner, Mina Tadrous, Braeden A Terpou, Niels Thakkar, Ruoxi Wang, and Noah M Ivers.
• Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto in Ontario, and a staff general internal medicine physician at the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto.
• Can Fam Physician. 2024 Oct 1; 70 (10): e156e168e156-e168.

ObjectiveTo describe family physicians who primarily practise in a walk-in clinic setting and compare them with family physicians who provide longitudinal care.DesignA cross-sectional study that linked results from a 2019 physician survey to provincial administrative health care data in Ontario. The characteristics, practice patterns, and patients of physicians primarily working in a walk-in clinic setting were compared with those of family physicians providing longitudinal care.SettingOntario.ParticipantsPhysicians who primarily worked in a walk-in clinic setting in 2019, as indicated by an annual physician survey.Main Outcome MeasuresPhysician demographic and practice characteristics, as well as their patients' demographic and health care utilization characteristics, were reported according to whether the physician was a walk-in clinic physician or a family physician who provided longitudinal care.ResultsCompared with the 9137 family physicians providing longitudinal care, the 597 physicians who self-identified as practising primarily in walk-in clinics were more frequently male (67% vs 49%) and more likely to speak a language other than English or French (43% vs 32%). Walk-in clinic physicians tended to have more encounters with patients who were younger (mean 37 vs 47 years), who had lower levels of prior health care utilization (15% vs 19% in highest band), who resided in large urban areas (87% vs 77%), and who lived in highly ethnically diverse neighbourhoods (45% vs 35%). Walk-in clinic physicians tended to have more encounters with unattached patients (33% vs 17%) and with patients attached to another physician outside their group (54% vs 18%).ConclusionPhysicians who primarily work in walk-in clinics saw many patients from historically underserved groups and many patients who were attached to another family physician.Copyright © 2024 the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

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