Clinicians and administrators in Alberta, Canada, built a data bridge between primary care and public health stakeholders to improve the province’s community-based response to the pandemic. The authors traced the data bridge’s foundations to: policy commitments to the Patient Medical Home model as well as organizational and governance structures that actively drew together primary care and non-primary care stakeholders. Those commitments and structures opened the possibility for champions to emerge, trust to evolve, and integrative improvisation of health care practices to take place. Without a functional and well-established interface between independent primary care and the central health system, the authors argue that both pandemic responses, and everyday primary care integration efforts are likely to suffer.
Building a Data Bridge: Policies, Structures, and Governance Integrating Primary Care Into the Public Health Response to COVID-19
Myles Leslie, PhD, MJ, MA, et al
School of Public Policy and Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
The Annals of Family Medicine