PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - June C. Carroll AU - Yves Talbot AU - Joanne Permaul AU - Anastasia Tobin AU - Rahim Moineddin AU - Sean Blaine AU - Jeff Bloom AU - Debra Butt AU - Kelly Kay AU - Deanna Telner TI - Academic family health teams DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - Canadian Family Physician PG - e23--e30 VI - 62 IP - 1 4099 - http://www.cfp.ca/content/62/1/e23.short 4100 - http://www.cfp.ca/content/62/1/e23.full SO - Can Fam Physician2016 Jan 01; 62 AB - Objective To explore patients’ perceptions of primary care (PC) in the early development of academic family health teams (aFHTs)—interprofessional PC teams delivering care where family medicine and other health professional learners are trained—focusing on the 4 core domains of PC.Design Self-administered survey using the Primary Care Assessment Tool Adult Expanded Version (PCAT), which addresses 4 core domains of PC (first contact, continuity, comprehensiveness, and coordination). The PCAT uses a 4-point Likert scale (from definitely not to definitely) to capture patients’ responses about the occurrence of components of care.Setting Six aFHTs in Ontario.Participants Adult patients attending appointments and administrators at each of the aFHTs.Main outcome measures Mean PCAT domain scores, with a score of 3 chosen as the minimum expected level of care. Multivariate log binomial regression models were used to estimate the adjusted relative risks of PCAT score levels as functions of patient- and clinic-level characteristics.Results The response rate was 47.3% (1026 of 2167). The mean age of respondents was 49.6 years, and most respondents were female (71.6%). The overall PC score (2.92) was just below the minimum expected care level. Scores for first contact (2.28 [accessibility]), coordination of information systems (2.67), and comprehensiveness of care (2.83 [service available] and 2.36 [service provided]) were below the minimum. Findings suggest some patient groups might not be optimally served by aFHTs, particularly recent immigrants. Characteristics of aFHTs, including a large number of physicians, were not associated with high performance on PC domains. Distributed practices across multiple sites were negatively associated with high performance for some domains. The presence of electronic medical records was not associated with improved performance on coordination of information systems.Conclusion Patients of these aFHTs rated several core domains of PC highly, but results indicate room for improvement in several domains, particularly first-contact accessibility. A future study will determine what changes were implemented in these aFHTs and if patient ratings have improved. This reflective process is essential to ensuring that aFHTs provide effective models of PC to learners of all disciplines.