The Need for Comprehensive Team-Based Primary Care
TPC Insights | By Ivy Oandasan and Ivy Bourgeault
Team Primary Care has had a significant social media presence this month, attendance and engagement events led by several partners at the Family Medicine Forum in Montreal and a change announced by one of our TPC partners (see CFPC Statement below). Meanwhile, access to primary care continues to be in crisis which is continuously highlighted in the media and reminds us why our project is so important.
In this month’s communique, we want to highlight our refined Vision & Mission statements as well as our new key messages in English and French. We suggest you utilize these for your communications for the TPC project and share them out widely.
For our health care system to be strong, primary care must be strong. For primary care to be strong, it needs to be provided using effective patient-centred team-based models. And for teams to be effective, we must start training practitioners to work together.
We need comprehensive team-based care because no one profession can do it all. What sets Team Primary Care apart is the transformative nature of our shared vision for primary care training. We aim to enhance opportunities for practitioners to learn from one another within the context of team-based models of care.
High quality primary care ensures “the provision of whole-person, integrated, accessible & equitable health care by interprofessional teams that are accountable for addressing the majority of an individual’s health and wellness needs across settings and through sustained relationships with patients, families and communities.” (Source)
The 4 C’s of Primary Care (illustrated in the diagram below) distinguish primary care services from tertiary or hospital-based care. First Contact, Comprehensive, Coordinated, Continuing Care are fundamental to what we must teach primary care providers across our 20+ health professions in TPC and the team training of our 14 Work Integration Demonstration projects.
Training our primary care workforce to work together as teams is a critical step to solving the coverage gaps across Canada and ensuring a commitment to the 4C’s is a core underpinning for this work.
Looking forward, this work must continue as we build momentum and help people access the comprehensive care they deserve. TPC’s 2024 Summit on February 22-23 in Ottawa (details to come) will highlight our individual and collective accomplishments and learning, as well as creating consensus on what needs to be done moving forward beyond the term of this work.
Improving primary care training will benefit patients through improved access to comprehensive and coordinated care, enhanced patient-centeredness, better health outcomes and increased satisfaction of both staff and patients.
We can no longer tinker around the edges. Team Primary Care is a unique and timely initiative that is transforming the changes our health care system needs now. Thank you for your ongoing commitment.