individual practitioner level. For this study, rural and remote medical workforce data were available for the most populous Australian state, New South Wales (NSW). For more than ten years, longitudinal data have been collected by the NSW Rural Doctors Network (NSW RDN), a state and federally funded rural workforce agency established in 1998 to respond to workforce recruitment and retention issues facing rural family physicians in NSW. In Australia, family physicians are more commonly termed 'general practitioners' (GPs). Data are collected annually by the NSW RDN through a GP workforce and skills survey of GPs for the express purpose of rural workforce planning. These survey data are supplemented from other sources, including biannual practice manager surveys and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency register of physicians. Many ofthan 15 km or had a break in continuous service provision of more than 3 months. A *'*failure' event was defined as a family physician leaving an appointment whilst a *'*censored' event was defined as a family physician remaining in an appointment at the end of the study observation period. Hence, another way of viewing a 'failure' is as a break in the provision of continuous care within a community. This was selected because relational continuity is known to be central to the development of trust and improved communication between doctors and their patients and to the securing of optimal health outcomes in the community \[[@B20]\]. Periods at risk were defined in days for each person.

Multiple 'failures' per family physician during the time period in question were permitted (though only