Continuity of Care

Family medicine and primary care face ongoing pressures for access, with demand for care overwhelming the capacity to deliver it. Common strategies to maximize access often operate to the exclusion or detriment of continuity of care. During the August 2025 Family Medicine Leadership Consortium meeting, rather than presuming a tradeoff between the two as inevitable, the proposition that family medicine is committed to improving access to continuity of care was put forth.

This article summarizes concepts and models for improving access that simultaneously preserve or elevate continuity of care. A full understanding of access requires nuanced data around demand and capacity at the day-to-day level. This data can be used to prioritize both access and continuity by incorporating both into appointment templates, right-sizing panels, and directing capacity to the times of greatest demand. Investing in innovative team models such as those incorporating upskilled medical assistants, or panels shared among small teams of physicians and advanced practice practitioners, allow expanded capacity to deliver access while maintaining continuity. Advanced access scheduling models build on foundations of managing demand and capacity to most efficiently match day-to-day visit capacity to demand and maximize access to the continuity clinician.

Improving access and continuity of care do not have to be a zero-sum game—by valuing and centering continuity among access interventions, healthcare systems can shift the paradigm between access and continuity from “either/or” to a symbiotic relationship, with access meaning access to continuity of care.