Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Health Services and Policy Research

Canada is facing a growing primary care crisis. Currently, over 6.5 million Canadians don't have a family doctor. There is increasing recognition that part of the solution to this crisis is the formation of primary care teams that include additional team members, such as social workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dieticians, and pharmacists. The number of primary care teams in Canada is growing, but there is a lack of evidence on how primary care teams are being implemented. This research project will address several important research gaps by answering the following questions: 1) How and in what ways are interprofessional primary care teams being implemented across Canada? 2) How does the context influence how the primary care team is implemented? 3) What are the options that policymakers can consider to support the implementation of primary care teams? To answer these questions, we will study the implementation of 13 interprofessional primary care teams in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. We will collect information from patients, primary care providers, primary care organizational leaders, and health system decision makers through surveys, focus groups, interviews, observing teams, reviewing policy documents, and extracting data from electronic health records. After studying these cases, we will convene health system decision makers, health professionals, patients, and researchers to co-develop policy options that could be implemented across Canada to support the implementation of interprofessional primary care teams. This research is expected to provide valuable evidence to inform the implementation, scale, and spread of team-based primary care models across Canada.