Enrollment in health maintenance organizations and other health plans integrating health care delivery and financing has grown dramatically over the last ten years, and many anticipate the trend will accelerate under health reform. As a result, more individuals changing health plans will have to change physicians. A number of these "switches" are involuntary—that is, individuals are forced to change physicians because they changed jobs and their new employers do not offer the same health plan(s) or because their employers changed the health plan(s) offered to employees. For patients in the midst of treatment, or those with chronic conditions, these involuntary switches often cause emotional distress and discontinuities in care.

This Research Agenda Brief was sponsored as an activity of the George Washington University Health Insurance Reform Project, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.