Team-Based Primary Care Alberta (TPCA) Forum Reflections
For both the Coalition for Primary Health Care (CPHC) and the Alberta College of Family Physicians (ACFP), it was quite an achievement to bring representatives from all partners in primary care together and have in-depth conversations on how to advance team-based primary care in our province. Voices around the tables included family caregivers, citizen groups, patients, clinic managers, PCN leaders, policy makers, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, mental health and behavioral health consultants, and family physicians.
The daylong event was dynamic with keynote presentations followed by workshop discussions at 20 tables in the room and one virtual table online – every voice was listened to. The day certainly kept me engaged and involved with fellow attendees more than at any other conference or meeting that I have attended in recent times. It was a testament to not only the planning and facilitation of the event, but also to the relevance and importance of the topic at hand.
For many of us, this was not a new conversation. Over the past 15 years, the ACFP has been working with its partners to achieve the vision of the Patient’s Medical Home. We have made progress in Alberta but have also struggled with setbacks and hurdles along the way. Family physicians cannot deliver all that is required to support primary care on their own. We know that we are functioning at the limit of our capacity, and we want to be a part of the change to ensure that a more interdisciplinary approach to primary care is implemented.
This forum has made me feel energized, engaged, collaborative, hopeful, and more aware that we all share a common vision. I feel optimistic regarding the next steps. Our goal is to advocate for the implementation of comprehensive primary care teams and ensure timely access for all our communities, as a basic human right.
As the ACFP staff continue to collate the key takeaways from the day, and our government relations team uses these findings to relate our policy recommendations, we should all be thinking about how we all can turn the ideas into affirmative actions.
In the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing with you more formally what we heard and what the next steps are. We remain steadfast in our commitment to co-creating, leading, and supporting the ongoing evolution of care delivery across the health system.
It has been an encouraging process thus far and I hope that together we shall be able to continue making headway in setting up primary health care for success. In the meantime, I would like to invite those of you who are passionate about team based primary care to join our Team-based Primary Care community on ACFP Networks.
Let’s stay connected and keep this momentum going.
Sincerely,
Noel DaCunha, MBBS, CCFP
President
Alberta College of Family Physicians
