Grant: Project Grant

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 and how to support implementation. 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 context influence how primary care teams are 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 15 interprofessional primary care teams in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. We will collect information from patients, primary care providers, primary care organizational leaders, and health system decision makers. We do this through surveys, focus groups, interviews, observing teams, reviewing policy documents, and extracting data from electronic health records. After studying these cases, we will bring together health system decision makers, health professionals, patients, and researchers to co-develop policy options that could be applied across Canada to support the implementation of interprofessional primary care teams. This research is expected to provide actionable evidence to inform the implementation, scale, and spread of team-based primary care models with the goal of improving the accessibility and quality of primary care across Canada.