Because of the difficulty in managing their care, patients with COPD have hospitalization rates 63 per cent higher than the general population, as well as 85 per cent more emergency department visits and 48 per cent more ambulatory care visits.
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Innovation in primary care for COPD patients has the potential to alleviate a significant strain on the health system by reducing emergency department visits and hospitalizations.
Until the government acknowledges the critical role family physicians have in population health and on easing the burden on acute hospital care, pressures will only be relieved temporarily.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
A strong primary care system keeps patients away from emergency departments and helps patients self-manage illnesses. But Ontario’s plan to ease pressure on emergency rooms ignores family medicine.
How can we get better primary health care access, quality and affordability that Labor has promised? We need to learn from what’s worked and failed overseas.
Primary care providers comprise nearly a third of the U.S. clinician workforce.
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Primary care doctors have long played an important role in providing birth control. Now, with the fall of Roe, they could help fill a critical need for comprehensive family planning services.
Labor’s election pledge for Medicare includes some additional funding, but to strengthen the system, it needs to improve people’s access to doctors.
In addition to patient care, many doctors also have heavy administrative burdens, including insurance company requests and government forms that advocate for their patients’ needs, as well as all the challenges of running an office.
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Less than half of Canadians can see their doctor same-day, and millions don’t even have a family doctor. Improving access to care means providing doctors with the support they need to focus on patients.
Australians over 50 can get their AstraZeneca vaccine from a GP clinic from today. Here’s what you need to know when you book yourself in.
With more health resources devoted to COVID-19, non-COVID patients may have unmet health-care needs, which predict poorer health in the future.
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With COVID-19 placing heavy demands on the health-care system, non-COVID patients may struggle to access care, putting women, people in poor health and those without a regular doctor at risk.
Reports suggest people have been visiting their GPs for a certificate clearing them of COVID-19, at the request of their employer or school. But doctors can’t conclusively clear a person of the virus.
Elderly people form part of families and households, and fulfil important caregiving and economic roles.
Getty/Klaus Vedfelt
Jane Hall, University of Technology Sydney e Kees Van Gool, University of Technology Sydney
Paying doctors a fee for each service they provide isn’t delivering optimal value for the health dollar. Instead, we should pay doctors a lump sum to care for a patient’s medical problem over time.
The Ontario government is proposing more than a 30 per cent pay cut for doctors working in new primary care models.
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The Ontario government and the Ontario Medical Association are currently engaged in arbitration to determine how family doctors will be paid.
There are now hundreds of genetic tests that claim to predict the risk of various diseases. All that’s needed is a few drops of blood.
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Individuals who carry the breast cancer genes BRCA1 or BRCA2 are often unaware of the fact. That suggests that physicians need a new way to apply DNA-based screens to identify those at risk.
For many of the nation’s poor, food and shelter are more important than health care. Questions of insurance coverage loom broadly, but another question lingers: how to treat the poor we do not see.
Rural primary health care, including patient evacuation services, general practice and mental health care deliver more than just health. There are economic benefits too.
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Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne