Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Interprofessional collaboration is a key aspect of primary healthcare and has been at the heart of several healthcare reforms. Still, little work has examined how characteristics of primary healthcare organizations influence the implementation of interprofessional collaboration. Our research objectives were to identify, in primary healthcare organizations, organizational characteristics associated with the degree of collaboration between 1) general practitioners (GPs) and medical specialists, and between 2) GPs and other types of healthcare professionals. This project consisted in a survey of primary care organizations in the Province of Quebec. A physician or administrative manager from each organization completed a questionnaire. Statistical analyses (bivariate/multivariate logistic regression) were conducted to assess associations between the following organizational characteristics and degree of collaboration: type of clinic (pre- vs. post-primary care reform), affiliation with a hospital by at least one of the clinic's GPs, clinic collaboration with a hospital, number of specialists/professionals in the clinic's building, proportion of patients with more than one chronic disease within the clinic's caseload, as well as region. Data were collected for 376 organizations. Clinic collaboration with a hospital and proportion of patients with chronic diseases were associated with degree of GP-specialist collaboration. Proportion of patients with chronic diseases was the only factor associated with collaboration between GPs and other professionals. Based on our findings, new types of primary healthcare organizations such as Family Medicine Groups were not associated with a higher degree of collaboration. The associations we found between proportion of patients with chronic diseases and collaboration are in line with the often-cited reason for promoting interprofessional collaboration as a means to better respond to needs of persons with chronic diseases.