This summer, I had the pleasure of working with #primarycare leaders across Ontario to formulate some #healthpolicy recommendations for primary care reform after Covid-19. A thread follows. @primarycare2025 #primarycare2025

You can find our full report and executive summary here: https://www.primarycare2025.com/ . This is the start of a conversation- share your thoughts with us here: https://forms.gle/HAfTHx6nAuaJ6G9x7

When Covid hit this spring, it emphasized the importance of an integrated primary care system. In some areas, primary care teams responded quickly to meet both routine and crisis needs of the population. In other areas, patients were unable to access care.

Covid brought rapid, adaptive shifts to healthcare design and delivery. In terms of a policy event, it brought unprecedented change that wasn’t mired in the typical assumptions and laboured decision-making processes. People jumped in to make the system work. #primarycare2025

We wrote this report because we want to ensure that as time goes on, the quick reforms that happened during Covid are sustained or revoked in a way that supports sustainable high quality care across the province. There’s a great opportunity here to capitalize on this momentum.

We formulated our recommendations to match the Patient Medical Home and Patient Medical Neighbourhood models described by @FamPhysCan https://patientsmedicalhome.ca/resources/best-advice-guides/the-patients-medical-neighbourhood/

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 1: We need integrated primary care hubs in each geographic region, that serve all patients within that region. Every patient guaranteed access to care through this hub; every patient should have access to interprofessional team-based care.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 2: This network of primary care providers (family physicians, nurse practitioners and others) will be organized together to work on acute (e.g. PPE) and chronic (e.g. strategic planning) system issues.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 3: These hubs will connect the silo-ed sectors, bringing together primary care, hospital-based infrastructure, public health in each region. (Yes! this sounds like it would work with @OntarioHealthOH teams!)

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 4: These hubs will be accountable for providing ACCESSIBLE care, which is not only defined as “same day care” but also flexible and convenient scheduling that responds both to urgency of need and to patient preference for timing, location & modality.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 5: These hubs will be socially accountable and community adaptive. They will address the backlog of deferred care, future Covid-19 waves, and population needs related to #SDOH using strategies such as social prescribing & connection with community resources.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 6: These hubs need leaders. The leaders should be family physicians and nurse practitioners. They need to be identified, developed, and supported. That means funding and programming.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 7: We need to recognize the value and complexity of generalist medicine and reward the generalist providers with remuneration that recognizes the complexity of diagnosis and management that happens at the top of the primary care scope

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 8: Patients and families are essential. They need to be meaningfully included not just in care but in any development and ongoing evaluation of the system and organization of healthcare.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 9: Safety should be embedded as a key quality metric in primary care. To do this effectively, training and support will be needed.

#PrimaryCare2025 Rec 10: Primary care leadership will need to be identified and supported. This means recruitment, training, and succession planning in every network.

We’re a group of primary care clinicians, researchers, and leaders from across Ontario. Many of us are affiliated with organizations, but we were only representing ourselves as individuals invested in seeing a better, more integrated primary care system for all Ontarians.

Want to join the conversation? We’re collecting feedback here: https://forms.gle/HAfTHx6nAuaJ6G9x7