RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Academic family health teams
JF Canadian Family Physician
JO Can Fam Physician
FD The College of Family Physicians of Canada
SP e23
OP e30
VO 62
IS 1
A1 Carroll, June C.
A1 Talbot, Yves
A1 Permaul, Joanne
A1 Tobin, Anastasia
A1 Moineddin, Rahim
A1 Blaine, Sean
A1 Bloom, Jeff
A1 Butt, Debra
A1 Kay, Kelly
A1 Telner, Deanna
YR 2016
UL http://www.cfp.ca/content/62/1/e23.abstract
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.