‘A wonderful system’

Primary care networks use teamwork to deliver seamless care to Albertans.

“The doctor comes in once a month,” says Betty Hoglund, 94, a resident of the High Country Lodge, a seniors’ home at Black Diamond. 

“He comes in and you talk to him and you tell him your complaints and he takes care of it.” 

However, Hoglund’s family doctor is just one member of an entire team of nurses, pharmacists, dietitians and other health care professionals who take care of her as part of the Calgary Rural primary care network. 

A primary care network is a team of family doctors and Alberta Health Services health providers who co-ordinate care for patients. Primary care networks can operate through one clinic, or the network could be comprised of several providers in several clinics.

Health providers in the Calgary Rural primary care network meet at least once a month at the Lodge to share information, come up with patient plans and pass around blueberry muffins and coffee. 

“The meetings give us the opportunity to just chat, in general, or if there are specific patients who we have concerns about, we chat about them as well,” says Kaye Andrews, leader of pharmacy project services for the Calgary Rural network.
 
“If there are changes in someone’s medication, I can go back and check on that person a couple of times through the month. As long as things are going according to the plan that we set out, I can make adjustments.” 

There are 35 primary care networks in the province with eight more in the planning phases.

The co-ordinated care provided by these networks helps keep people healthy by preventing heart disease, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. 

If a patient develops a disease, the integrated care provided by a network helps spot it and treat it much earlier.

“Roughly two-thirds of family doctors now belong to a primary care network,” says Dr. Richard Lewanczuk, the senior medical director of primary care and chronic disease management for Alberta Health Services.  

“There are still some geographic parts of the province where primary care networks don’t exist yet but roughly 60 per cent of the population has a family doctor that belongs to a primary care network,” he says. 

“Our goal is to make a (primary care network) available to everyone in the province within the next few years.”

It’s a change most patients may not and should not even notice, says Joe MacGillivray, the executive director of the Calgary Rural network.

“Patients don’t see, well, there are mental health services over here, and this is separate from my doctor over here, which is separate from my home care nurse over here,” he says.

“Patients don’t — and shouldn’t — see the system divided like that.  They just need to know that services are here, co-ordinated, when they need them.”

Like Betty Hoglund. 

“All I can say is you couldn’t find better health care and I am very happy here and everyone is so kind to me,” she says.

“I think it’s a wonderful system.”

For more information about primary care networks in Alberta, visit http://www.albertapci.ca/