Whose satisfaction?

Lorne Verhulst appears to wish that we had conducted a different study. The Ontario Walk-In Clinic Study, of which our study¹ was a part, was designed to examine the role and impact of walk-in clinics in Ontario. Accordingly, in selecting tracer conditions, we chose common acute conditions that are the bread and butter of walk-in clinic business. Although we agree that the patient population Verhulst identifies — those with chronic conditions and comorbidities — are an important target group for primary health care services, they are not a population that we would expect to be served either frequently or well by walk-in clinics. We would welcome and be open to collaborating in future research to identify models of primary health care delivery most suited to the needs of this important patient population.

Brian Hutchison Departments of Family Medicine and of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics McMaster University Hamilton, Ont. Truls Østbye Department of Community and Family Medicine Duke University Durham, NC Jan Barnsley Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation Faculty of Medicine University of Toronto Toronto, Ont.