Continuity of Care: A Primer for Family Medicine Residencies

Abstract

Continuity of care has been an identifying characteristic of family medicine since its inception and is an essential ingredient for high-functioning health care teams. Many benefits, including the quadruple aim of enhancing patient experience, improving population health, reducing costs, and improving care team well-being, are ascribed to continuity of care. In 2023, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) added two new continuity requirements— annual patient-sided continuity and annual resident-sided continuity—in family medicine training programs. This article reviews continuity of care as it applies to family medicine training programs. We discuss the various types of continuity and issues surrounding the measurement of continuity. A generally agreed upon definition of patient-sided and resident-sided continuity is presented to allow programs to begin to collect the necessary data. Especially within resident training programs, intricacies associated with maintaining continuity of care, such as empanelment, resident turnover, and scheduling, are discussed. The importance of right-sizing resident panels is highlighted, and a mechanism for accomplishing this is presented. The recent ACGME requirements represent a cultural shift from measuring resident experience based on volume to measuring resident continuity. This cultural shift forces family medicine training programs to adapt their various systems, policies, and procedures to emphasize continuity. We hope this manuscript’s review of several facets of contuinuity, some unique to training programs, helps programs ensure compliance with the ACGME requirements.