Health System Integration Built on the Foundation of Team-Based Primary Health Care
The AFHTO 2019 Conference program is built around 6 core themes.
Concurrent Theme Descriptions
Download a printable PDF of the theme descriptions here.
- Access to care: improving access to team-based care
- Continuous care: ensuring seamless transitions for patients across the continuum of care
- Comprehensive team-based care
- Patient and family-centred care
- Community and social accountability
- Enabling high -performing primary health care
1. Access to care: improving access to team-based care
As embodiments of the patient medical home in practice, it is in our patients’ and communities’ best interests to spread increased access to primary care teams. Timely access to interprofessional team-based primary health care can help reduce disparities in health outcomes.
Topics of interest include:
- Access to a diverse range of programs based on community needs
- Access for all Ontarians
- Addressing barriers to team-based care
- Providing care outside the ‘roster’
2. Continuous care: ensuring seamless transitions for patients across the continuum of care
As providers of womb to tomb care, primary care providers accompany their patients through life’s journey. So, they’re best positioned to take care of them through any health changes that may involve other parts of the health system from time to time. Primary care teams can coordinate with these partners as they all come together to ensure as seamless a transition as possible.
Topics of interest include:
- Care coordination and system navigation
- Avoidable hospitalization and post-discharge follow up
3. Comprehensive team-based care
Interprofessional primary care teams have the capacity to offer a broad range of services due to the range of complementary skills team members possess. However, teams need to take full advantage of these skills and deploy them effectively through true collaboration if they want to make the most of their inherent resources. Teams that do this are truly taking care of the whole patient.
Topics of interest include:
- High performing teams and enablers to high performance
- Competency-based practice
- Palliative and end of life care
- Mental health and addictions
4. Patient and family-centred care
No one is more important to patients’ health than patients themselves, their families and caregivers. Since this is true, primary health care teams need to provide patient-focused and centred care, responding to their needs, preferences and expectations.
Topics of interest include how to:
- Patient and family co-design for programs and services that matter to them
- Communication modes – outside the ‘norm’
- Digital health and care beyond the clinic
- Self-managed care
5. Community and social accountability
As members of their communities, primary health care teams need to understand and be accountable to them in order to fully address their patients’ needs. Teams can only do this if they take a holistic approach to care, striving to understand their patients’ environments and multiple realities that can affect their lives.
Topics of interest include:
- Addressing social determinants of health
- Indigenous health
- Marginalised communities
- Becoming better neighbours
6. Enabling high -performing primary health care
The healthier the team and the healthier the environment in which the team lives, the better for all involved. No one is isolated from the system, and changes at the micro and macro level can have repercussions for patient care. As such, teams need to address issues at all levels, including within the team itself, to provide high -performing primary health care.
Topics of interest include:
- Collaborative governance
- System and resource integration – programs and services
- Aligning our quality initiatives
- The health of the provider- addressing burnout