A Family Health Team model

The article below describes a community’s response to pressures affecting its health human resources and its ability to deliver effective, quality health care. Many of the issues raised in the article are ones that we share in PEI – physician recruitment challenges, shifting demographics among the medical profession whereby more medical school graduates are choosing to specialize rather than enter family medicine, physician retirement, and so on.... Granted, there have been some good news stories, including some recent success recruiting physicians, but the times are changing and recruitment is just one piece of the puzzle.

The article outlines the development of an interprofessional, team-based health delivery system for the Peterborough region of Ontario, adhering to the ideals of collaborative, patient-centred care outlined in one of my previous blog posts. The Peterborough region currently has five interprofessional family health teams (two in the city of Peterborough), consisting of family doctors, nurse practitioners, receptionists (yes...they are an integral part of the health team concept), registered nurses, dietitians, social workers and so on. In 2008 the Peterborough Regional Health Centre was opened with the intention of expanding the interprofessional care concept to include outpatient services and bring specialist physicians into the mix.

It’s an interesting concept and one that appears to be working. Fourteen thousand people have been taken off the waiting list for a family doctor in the Peterborough region in the last two years and wait times have decreased. We have family health teams on PEI and I’m not sure how they compare to those in Peterborough, but the two jurisdictions are strikingly similar. Peterborough and Prince Edward Island are almost exactly equivalent in population (139,818 in PEI as of 2008 vs. 133,080 in Peterborough as of 2006). Both jurisdictions are also largely rural and comparable in overall area and population density (23.9 people per square kilometre in PEI vs. 35 per square kilometre in Peterborough).

I think it’s something that bears watching. If successful, some of the concepts that drive the Peterborough model might be worth adopting on PEI. For one thing, I’m curious to know how many people the Peterborough health teams count as patients compared to PEI teams. I’ll keep you posted if I find out. What are your thoughts?

The Perfect Storm

How a community calmed the rough waters of health care
By Gordon Gibb

You’ll have to forgive Dr. Don Harterre for choosing a winged warthog as his office mascot. The diminutive porker suspended above his desk serves as a delicious metaphor in view of recent success implementing family health teams in Peterborough, Ont., — something one local physician predicted would only happen "when pigs fly."

In Peterborough, an idyllic city of 75,000 located 90 minutes northeast of Toronto, health care is something people love to talk about these days.

Little wonder. The sprawling, state-of-the-art Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) is slated to open in June, consolidating two outdated hospitals into one meticulously planned facility. The Peterborough Clinic has just moved into a new building adjacent to the PRHC, with its orphaned facility downtown tagged to house expanded vascular health services. Five family health teams are flourishing. And upwards of 14,000 people have come off the waiting list for a family doctor in the past two years.

read the rest of the article here...