What happens when you keep the same doctor for 15 years

Most of us don’t choose our doctor so much as end up with one. We move house, change jobs, or simply see whoever has an appointment free. Over a lifetime, many people see dozens of different doctors and get to know none of them.

Does that matter? A few years ago, researchers in Norway set out to answer that question with unusually good data.

Norway gives every resident a named GP, and records how long each person stays with that doctor. The researchers looked at the records of almost the whole population and compared people who had been with the same GP for many years with people who had recently changed.

The differences were large. People who had been with the same GP for more than 15 years had about 30% fewer out-of-hours visits, 28% fewer emergency hospital admissions, and a 25% lower risk of dying in a given year than people who had been with their GP for a year or less. The study accounted for age, education and existing illness, and the effect grew steadily the longer people stayed.

Norway is not unusual. A review in BMJ Open looked at 22 studies from nine countries on continuity of care, meaning seeing the same doctor over time. In 18 of them, people who saw the same doctor had a lower risk of death.

Why would knowing your doctor make such a difference? Doctors who know a patient well tend to say three things.

First, they know what normal looks like for that person. A blood pressure reading, a weight change or a tired voice means more when there are years of earlier readings to compare it with.

Second, they notice small changes early. A patient who mentions the same mild symptom twice, a year apart, is easier to spot when the same person hears both.

Third, there is trust. Patients tell a doctor they know about the things they might keep from a stranger, and they are more likely to follow advice from someone who has known them for years.

None of this needs a new technology. It needs time, and the same person on the other side of the desk.

What can you do with this?

If you have a doctor you trust, it is worth staying with them, even when another appointment would be quicker.

If you see a new doctor each time, ask whether you can book with the same one for the next few visits. Many practices will do this if you ask.

Keep your own record: your diagnoses, medicines, and results from the past few years. It helps any doctor see the full picture.

And for children and older relatives, continuity matters even more, because they often find it harder to describe what has changed.

At The Wellness, this research shaped how we designed our primary care membership. Each member has a named doctor who gets to know them and their family over time, and who they can reach directly when they need to.

The study: Sandvik H and colleagues, Continuity in general practice as predictor of mortality, acute hospitalisation, and use of out-of-hours care: a registry-based observational study in Norway, British Journal of General Practice, 2022. The review: Pereira Gray DJ and colleagues, Continuity of care with doctors, a matter of life and death? BMJ Open, 2018.