Trust is a fundamental aspect of any human relationship, and medical care is no exception. An ongoing, trusting relationship between clinicians and patients has shown demonstrable value to primary care. However, there is currently no measure of trust in general use, and none endorsed for use by most value-based payment programs. This review searched the literature for any existing measures of patient trust in primary care clinicians and assessed their potential to be implemented as a patient-reported outcome measure.

This scoping review unified the interrelatedness of comprehensiveness’s main aspects – whole-person care, range of services, and referral to specialty care – framing a working, evidence-based definition: managing most medical care needs and temporarily complementing care with special integrated services in the context of patient’s values, preferences, and beliefs.