Practitioner empathy and patient enablement at a ‘contact’ consultation were retrospectively associated with changes in main complaint and well-being in a cross-sectional study of outpatients attending the Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital. Patient expectation, relational continuity and duration of attendance at the hospital were also correlated with perceived change in the health outcome in univariate analysis. However, multi-regression analysis suggested three major independent variables associated with health outcome: empathy, enablement and duration of attendance. Health outcomes were then measured in the same cohort 12 months after ‘contact’ consultation. Both univariate and multivariate analysis indicated that the only significant predictive factor in health change over the 12-month period was patient enablement score at contact consultation.