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Excerpt: The evolving needs of patients and their communities place ever-changing demands on the health care system to maintain and improve the quality of services provided. Changing population demographics, increasing complexity, and new technology make for a dynamic system. Family physicians are at the heart of the health care system, acting as the rst point of contact and a reliable medical resource to the communities they serve, caring for patients and supporting them throughout all interactions with the health care system. The Patient’s Medical Home (PMH) is a vision that emphasizes the role of the family practice and family physicians in providing high-quality, compassionate, and timely care.
The success of a PMH depends on collaboration and teamwork—from the patient’s participation in their care to interprofessional and intraprofessional care
providers working together, to policy-makers who can o er infrastructure support and funding. PMH 2019 was created with invaluable feedback from a broad range of stakeholders re ective of such a joint approach. Its goal is to make the PMH a reality for patients and providers across Canada.
In 2011 the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) released A Vision for Canada: Family Practice – The Patient’s Medical Home.1 It outlined a vision for the future of primary care by transforming the health care system to better meet the needs of everyone living in Canada. The vision outlined the 10 pillars that make up the PMH and provided detailed recommendations to assist family physicians and their teams, as well as policy-makers and health care system administrators, to implement this new model across the country.
While progress has been made, there is still work to be done to fully achieve the PMH vision. In 2016 almost 75 per cent of Canadians rated the quality of care received from their family physicians as good or excellent.4 In 2017 a CFPC survey found that 79 per cent of respondents rate the care they receive from their family doctor as excellent or good.5However, at the same time 55 per cent of Canadians also believed that the overall health care system still required fundamental changes.4 In addition, Canada continues to perform below the international average on certain aspects of patient-centred care; for example, same- or next-day access to appointments. While most Canadians (84.7 per cent) have a regular doctor or place of care, they generally report longer wait times for medical care than adults in
comparable countries.4 PMH 2019 addresses these concerns and proposes solutions that can help further improve the primary care system for all.
