Year in Review

I will remember 2024 as the year that rocked Alberta’s health care system to its core. There were new leaders, new policies, new funding models, new team members, and new structures being tossed into the mix every other month.

While the government works to implement the changes that it believes will set the health care system in the right direction for the future, we have done our own work. We know that optimizing team-based primary care will be one of the most impactful changes to primary care. Team-based primary care is not new in Alberta, but it has not been equitably spread and scaled, and it certainly has not been adequately funded across the province.

The ACFP believes strongly that in order to make family medicine and primary care the foundation of the health care system, the changes have to be supported and implemented at every level, from grass roots practice change to system level policy and support improvements. Change cannot be imposed; it has to be desired and accepted. We believe that this can only happen when
everyone is engaged in the change process – from issue identification to co-design, co-delivery, constant developmental evaluation, and purposeful adaptation.

The answers must come from “inside the room”, from those who use the system as customers, those who deliver services at the coal-face, and those who are willing to lead from their place in the system. The ACFP has worked very hard to bring together partners, providers, patients and family members, and policy makers. We have supported the evolution of the Coalition for Primary Health Care, and we collaborated on a forum that brought everyone together for a day of storytelling, building trust, sharing dreams and aspirations, and creating some solid recommendations for next steps. The Team-Based Primary Care Alberta Forum held this past fall in Calgary was a catalyst for change; it was an example of how to inspire a community of practice and to build leaders and ambassadors from within.

This upcoming year can happen to us, or we can choose to lead and adapt. We have a choice to make—to stand up, walk into it, and engage, or to stay laying prone, waiting for someone to lift us up after a debilitating fall.

Just as last year’s ACFP Family Medicine Summit in Banff brought together our community and built our solidarity, we anticipate a more critical gathering this year where we will celebrate 70 years of our Summit. More importantly, we will reignite the passion for family medicine at a most critical time. Albertans are asking for a home in the health care system, family physicians wanting to deliver the best care possible, and the system professing to have the willingness and
resources to build what is needed. We all need to stand up, step forward, follow, and lead. Don’t fear the fall, brace yourselves, lean in, and create the future that you always dreamed could be possible

Noel DaCunha, MBBS, CCFP
President
Alberta College of Family Physicians