Health systems are moving away from traditional
primary care (e.g., by increasingly shifting to group
practice and interprofessional teams rather than solo
practice primary-care providers), which is often siloed
and results in barriers to timely access to care.(1) The
Ministry of Health of British Columb...
Provincial and territorial health systems across Canada
continue to struggle with delivering timely access to
primary-care services. In 2016, 74% of Canadians reported
in the Commonwealth International Health Policy Survey
that they received excellent or very good care from their
regular doctor, which is...
Positioning primary care as the cornerstone of the
health system and establishing primary-care providers as
the gatekeepers and coordinators of care has been a
long-sought aim of health systems around the world.
Further, a main aim of this goal in Canada has been to
have a primary-care provider that is r...
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario
(CPSO) and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have formed a
partnership to support ongoing training, education and
quality improvement across the province. This
partnership will develop provincial quality-management
programs for the service areas of colonoscopy,
m...
Optimizing clinical practice based on data, evidence and
guidelines is a challenge faced in every health system
around the world. The way the challenge manifests
itself at the level of the patient has been remarkably
consistent over time: tough decisions made at the
intersection of clinical expertise, pa...
Provincial and territorial ministries of health have made
significant investments in primary healthcare reform
over recent years to improve access, quality, continuity
of care, cost, satisfaction and health outcomes.
Interdisciplinary team-based care, networks with
streamlined care pathways, the use of h...
Multimorbidity is part of the daily life of a growing
number of Ontarians who must manage multiple
chronic conditions. As Fortin et al. observed, “patients
with multiple conditions are the rule rather than the
exception in primary care.”
Multimorbidity not only has a significant impact on
healthcare ...
Nurse practitioners are ‘registered nurses with additional
educational preparation and experience who possess and
demonstrate the competencies to autonomously diagnose,
order and interpret diagnostic tests, prescribe
pharmaceuticals and perform specific procedures within their
legislated scope of pract...
This issue brief mobilizes both global and local
research evidence about a problem, three options
for addressing the problem, and key
implementation considerations. Whenever
possible, the issue brief summarizes research
evidence drawn from systematic reviews of the
research literature and occasionally fr...
Primary healthcare includes first-contact services
delivered by a range of providers. Most commonly in
Canada these providers are general practitioners and
family physicians. However, increasingly these providers
can also include nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and
telephone advice lines, among others....
