Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Ontario's introduction of Family Health Teams (FHTs) offers one of the largest examples of team-based primary care in North-America. However, up until now, evaluations of this new policy have not fully account for the methodological complexities linked with trying to disentangle the 'real' effect of belonging to a FHT from the differences between patients who go to a FHT versus other types of clinics. Recent developments in statistics have outlined specific conditions under which the cause of policy interventions like FHTs can be accurately determined. However, there is a lack of literature that shows how to assess these conditions and make informed decisions about the level of causal evidence that can be drawn from the data. This study presents a novel way to testing these conditions by using formal interviews with key stakeholders. This qualitative approach gives additional evidence on whether the conditions hold or are being violated, above and beyond, what can be found in the literature. Overall, this research will help provide one of the most accurate assessments of a Canadian primary care policy reform to date. It will show how qualitative methods can be used to inform and strengthen quantitative methods, specifically for the evaluation of health policies. More broadly, it will provide a roadmap for other researchers on how to strengthen the claims of their policy or intervention studies.