Grant: Operating Grant: Transitions in Care - Evaluation Grants

Traditionally, primary care has focused on establishing long-standing patient-physician relationships as a means to providing coordinated, continuous, patient-centered, and comprehensive care. Yet, it is unknown whether adolescents and young adults with chronic conditions maintain relationships with primary care providers when they transfer from specialized pediatric to adult-oriented care. Our project will evaluate patient-provider relationships in primary care before and after transfer from specialized pediatric services. We will profile patterns of primary care use by young Albertans (ages 12-25) who receive specialist care as an adolescent (12-18 years old). We will focus on those who have received care in specialist clinics at pediatric hospitals in Alberta (i.e., diabetes, endocrinology, gastroenterology, neurology, nephrology, rheumatology, cardiology, mental health). We will achieve 3 aims: (1) we will describe patterns of primary care use by adolescents and young adults during the transition from adolescence to adulthood; (2) we will determine if continuity of primary care changes after transfer (age 18) and assess the relationship between continuity of primary care and rate of Emergency Department (ED) use; and (3) we will gain deeper insights into our quantitative findings through interviews with key stakeholders (e.g., adolescents, caregivers, physicians). The new knowledge generated by this project will be used to facilitate stronger linkages between specialty pediatric care, mental health care, and primary care, and inform transition policies and practices for the growing population of young adults with chronic conditions in Alberta, and in Canada.