Characteristics of walk-in clinic physicians and patients in Ontario: Cross-sectional study.

Objective: To describe family physicians who primarily practise in a walk-in clinic setting and compare them with family physicians who provide longitudinal care.

Design: A 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.

Setting: Ontario.

Participants: Physicians who primarily worked in a walk-in clinic setting in 2019, as indicated by an annual physician survey.

Main outcome measures: Physician 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.

Results: Compared 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%).

Conclusion: Physicians who primarily work in walk-in clinics saw many patients from historically underserved groups and many patients who were attached to another family physician.