Measuring the relationship between outpatient family physician visit regularity and acute care utilization during the end of life: a population-level retrospective cohort study

The authors aimed to investigate the relationship between the regularity of outpatient visits to family physicians and the utilization of acute care services in the last month of life for patients with cardiorespiratory conditions. Their findings indicated that higher visit regularity, as measured by the relative variance index, was associated with increased hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and acute care deaths, suggesting that more consistent outpatient care may correlate with greater acute care needs. However, the sensitivity of the relative variance index to different observation periods raises questions about its effectiveness as a quality indicator for end-of-life care.