Skip to main content
. 2018 Dec;64(12):930–934.

Table 2.

Policy directions to support effective primary care

POLICY DIRECTIONS AREAS OF FOCUS
Enable integration of patient-oriented care across primary care, behavioural health, public health, and social services
  • Building data collection infrastructure and analysis to support continuous quality and outcome improvement

  • Planning and training a work force that will support team-based care

  • Expanding capacity for coordination across systems, including interoperable health records and data linkages

Support a culture shift: from provider-centred to patient-centred care; physician-based to team-based care; disease-focused to health-focused care; and individual- based care only to individual-based and population-based care
  • Engaging the community in local solutions through health system governance structures that include community representation

  • Having meaningful patient and family engagement in redesign and quality improvement

  • Emphasizing measures of patient experience, engagement, and outcomes

  • Basing outcome measures on individual goals and preferences, as well as the population served; and basing payment on performance on these measures

Invest in implementation, evaluation, and mechanisms for spread and scale of successful primary care innovations and models
  • Evaluating the innovation of implementation projects and their contribution to the overarching policy vision for primary care

  • Aligning new payment incentives across payers to support scaling up

  • Funding implementation and coaching to spread learning systems and rapidly bring effective models to scale, such as through practice facilitation, local learning collaboratives, health professionals’ training and virtual mentoring, and networked implementation laboratories or incubators like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the United States